most of the milky way's globular clusters are found in the outer part of the galaxy's halo.
where are most of the milky way's globular clusters found?
outer part of the galaxy's halo
of the globular clusters within the milky way, the majority are found in a halo around the galactic core, and the large majority are located in the celestial sky centered on the core. in 1918, this strongly asymmetrical distribution was used by shapley to make a determination of the overall dimensions of the galaxy. by assuming a roughly spherical distribution of globular clusters around the galaxy’s center, he used the positions of the clusters to estimate the position of the sun relative to the galactic center. while his distance estimate was in significant error (although within the same order of magnitude as the currently accepted value), it did demonstrate that the dimensions of the galaxy were much greater than had been previously thought.
globular cluster
it is estimated that there are globular clusters in ngc 1380. there are two district populations of globular clusters, one red and one blue. the blue globular clusters have similar color and magnitude as the globular clusters in the halo of the milky way, but have a flatter surface density profile. the red globular clusters form the majority of the globular clusters of the galaxy. they have similar distribution to the stellar disk of ngc 1380 and have slightly higher metallicity than the globular clusters in the milky way, and are associated with the bulge of the galaxy. based on their size, there are three star cluster populations, the typical globular clusters, with effective radius under 3 kpc, the diffuse star clusters, with effective radius circa 5 kpc, and the faint fuzzy clusters, with effective radius over 8 kpc. the typical globular clusters are closer to the nucleus than the diffuse star clusters.
ngc 1380