Announcements 1999

1 June 1999: Observations of globular clusters teach us how the first generation of stars in our Galaxy formed some 12 to 15 billion years ago and how they have evolved ever since. Globular clusters are extremely dense stellar environments that typically contain between one hundred thousand to one million stars. The density of these star cities presents us with a wealth of information on stars of all sizes but also presents a great challenge – how can we peer into the very heart of such a dense star cluster? Gemini, with its excellent image quality, can provide extremely sharp pictures that deblur and deblend the star images and allow observations right into the very heart of these oldest stellar environments. The optical picture on the left is sharp and clear because of the good atmospheric conditions on Mauna Kea and the excellent optical quality of the Gemini telescope. Yet NGC 6934 contains ...