March 31, 2005: Like dust bunnies that lurk in corners and under
beds, surprisingly complex loops and blobs of cosmic dust lie
hidden in the giant elliptical galaxy NGC 1316. This image made
from data obtained with the NASA Hubble Space Telescope reveals
the dust lanes and star clusters of this giant galaxy that give
evidence that it was formed from a past merger of two gas-rich
galaxies. Astronomers are using the ACS camera onboard Hubble to
study star clusters in several nearby giant elliptical galaxies.
Globular clusters are compact stellar systems with hundreds of
thousands to millions of stars formed at the same time. By
counting the number of globular clusters detected as a function
of their brightness they could, for the first time, see evidence
of the gradual disruption of star clusters created during a past
merger of gas-rich galaxies. The unprecedented sensitivity of
the Hubble ACS data permitted the team to detect faint globular
clusters previously impossible to reach. They found that the
relative