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A famous example of a globular star-cluster, but one not included in the Milky Way, is the ``Great Cluster in Hercules. This is barely visible to the naked eye, but a small telescope shows its character, and in a large one it presents a marvelous spectacle.
One of them, near a conspicuous star-cluster in Scorpio, M80, is interesting for having been the first of these strange objects noted by Herschel. Probably it was its nearness to M80 which suggested to his mind the apparent connection of such vacancies with star-clusters which we have already mentioned.
The changes which are brought about at that season of the year, in reality, of course, because of the gradual increase in the effect of the sun's rays as he rises higher and higher above the celestial equator, would be attributed, in part at least, to the remarkable star-cluster coming then close by the sun on the heavens, though unseen.
But in that case there must have been an original condensation of stars at that point in space. This could probably have been produced by the coagulation of a great nebula into stellar nuclei, a process which seems now to be taking place in the Orion Nebula. A yet more remarkable globular star-cluster exists in the southern hemisphere, Omega Centauri.
If we could voyage through the sea of space, it would be thus we might come upon some star-cluster and have the same delightful doubt which should become our sun the first. In half an hour they were all about us; the nearer revealing by their light the dark bodies connected with them; the farther still showing only themselves. The teahouses along the water-front made a milky-way ahead.
But he observed the amenities, placing one delicate hand on his breast and making a slight bow. "Doctor Ray." His muzzle, shaped something like a duck's bill, nevertheless formed Paula's name tolerably well. "And you, I think, are Mr. Kieran." Kieran said, "Yes." The star-cluster blazed overhead. The dead beasts lay behind him, the people with their flying hair had run on beyond his sight.
These, unlike the others, are found outside as well as inside the Milky Way, although they are more numerous inside its boundaries than elsewhere. The term star-cluster is sometimes applied, though improperly, to assemblages which are rather groups, such, for instance, as the Pleiades. In their most characteristic aspect star-clusters are of a globular shape globes of suns!
This flat star-cluster is conceived to be moving edgewise through the chaos, and, according to Professor Comstock, it acts after the manner of a snow-plough sweeping away the cosmic dust and piling it on either hand above and below the plane of the moving cluster.
Away to the North, I could discern a nebulous sort of mistiness; not unlike, in appearance, a small portion of the Milky Way. It might have been an extremely remote star-cluster; or the thought came to me suddenly perhaps it was the sidereal universe that I had known, and now left far behind, forever a small, dimly glowing mist of stars, far in the depths of space.
Each of these supposed 'ultimates' is now known to be the scene of indescribable activities, a complex piece of mechanism composed of thousands of parts, a star-cluster in miniature, subject to all kinds of dynamical vicissitudes, to perturbations, accelerations, internal friction, total or partial disruption. And to each is appointed a fixed term of existence.
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