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Our Sun is 4.5 billion years old, which may seem like an unbelievably long time, however, in astronomy it isn't very long
and some stars are much older. Most very old stars appear in big groups, forming globular clusters.
This image was taken on 26 September 2008. It shows the globular cluster, known as M 13. Nearly 100,000 stars make up clusters
like M 13 and each one of those stars is around 14 billion years old. M 13 is 25,100 light-years away from the Earth.
Astronomers use globular clusters to learn more about how stars, like our Sun, developed and what chemical elements were around
immediately after the 'big bang' at the creation of our Universe.
This colour image is made up of three, one minute exposures in the R, V and B band.
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