Caption: 47 Tucanae is magnificent naked-eye globular cluster. These ancient cities of stars contain several million stars, as many as some minor galaxies, and the central region is very crowded. This crowding leads to occasional stellar encounters and it is in 47 Tuc that rapidly-spinning pulsars have recently been discovered by radio astronomers. Though the light of globular clusters is dominated by so-called "red" giant stars, their color is no redder than a domestic tungsten lamp, so the true color of 47 Tuc is closer to the pale yellow reproduced here.
Copyright: (c) 1992 Anglo-Australian Telescope Board, photograph by David Malin
