“Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and adventures are the shadow truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes and forgotten.” -Neil Gaiman
When you consider the short life of a star cluster -- from a collapsing molecular cloud to a nebula rich in gas and dust to a bright cluster of shining stars until the time it dissociates -- you might think that they'd all be the same, except for a few details like mass and density profile. But then how would you explain this object?
Image credit: John C. Mirtle of http://www.astrofoto.ca/john/m026.htm.
Here's a cluster, 89 million years old, whose core is almost totally devoid of stars, exactly where we'd expect it to be densest. You might think there's some leftover, nebulous dust, but in a cluster this old, that's unheard of! You might also think that there's just a stellar deficiency, but that's also unheard of!
Image credit: © 2006 — 2012 by Siegfried Kohlert, via http://www.astroimages.de/en/gallery/M26.html.
Come find out the story of Messier 26, the first Messier object to completely disappoint its discoverer.
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