A popular telescope peered into the constellation Sagittarius to view a stunning assortment of candy-colored stars. The team behind the Hubble Space Telescope just recently released this image of a heavenly body called NGC 6717 thats situated about 20,000 light-years far from Earth. Its a globular cluster, or a round collection of stars that are firmly held together by gravity. The stellar population is denser at the center of the globular cluster than it is at the edges, offering it its signature appearance. The view was published on Sept. 6 by the European Space Agency (ESA), which manages Hubble together with NASA. Related: The best Hubble Space Telescope pictures of all time!NGC 6717 is located about 20,000 light-years from Earth, according to the European Space Agency (ESA). This image was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, which is run by ESA and NASA. (Image credit: ESA/Hubble and NASA/A. Sarajedini) But according to the Hubble team, not all of the intense speckles in this image belong to the cluster: Some of the stars are situated much closer to Earth than the remote cluster. These nearby stars are recognizable by the light surging from their sides in a criss-cross development, which happens when their starlight engages with the hardware that supports Hubbles secondary mirror, wrote ESA authorities. Globular clusters are discovered across the night sky, but some are simpler to study than others. Bodies like galaxy NGC 6717 fall under the latter classification, due to the fact that their location in the constellation Sagittarius puts them near the center of the Milky Way in the sky. The core of Earths house galaxy is filled with gas and dust that absorb light, making it harder for astronomers to study the properties of this globular cluster.To resolve this, researchers studied NGC 6717 using two Hubble instruments: its Wide Field Camera 3 and the Advanced Camera for Surveys, which collectively view the universe across a number of wavelength classifications from the electro-magnetic spectrum. Follow Doris Elin Urrutia on Twitter @salazar_elin. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook..
