Inside a globular cluster

[Robinegg]

Does APOD have any artist’s renditions of what the night sky would look like from a world near the center of a globular cluster?

[Ann]

Does APOD have any artist’s renditions of what the night sky would look like from a world near the center of a globular cluster?

Maybe a bit like this:

Inside globular cluster 47 Tuc. Credit: William Harris and Jeremy Webb

Near the center of globular cluster Terzan 2. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Cohen

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Ann

[Orca]

It's kind of an interesting thought experiment - what would the sky look like from a planet orbiting a member of a globular cluster? I suppose it would depend greatly on the current position of the star relative to the rest of the cluster. Near the center you'd have a dense concentration of stars all around; near the edge you'd only see a big contrast in the number of stars depending on whether your horizon is facing back toward the cluster and when it's pointing away from the cluster into deep space (globular clusters lie outside the Milky Way so there'd be a lot of "dark" around them).

According to NASA, the average stellar density in the center of M13 is 100 times that of our stellar neighborhood. So if we can see with the naked eye roughly 2000 stars on a moonless night away from light pollution, would it be safe to conclude that on a similar night - standing on an imaginary planet in the center of M13 - you'd see 20,000 stars?

I suspect the practical number you'd actually observe would be lower. There would be other things to consider, such as the fact that globular clusters are mostly made up of low mass, Pop I stars. The apparent magnitude of such stars would drop off quickly with distance.