"Astronomers have found runaway stars before, but this is the first time we've found a runaway star cluster," says Nelson Caldwell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
The "HVGC" in HVGC-1 stands for hypervelocity globular cluster. Globular clusters ....usually contain thousands of stars crammed into a ball a few dozen light-years across. The Milky Way galaxy is home to about 150 globular clusters. The giant elliptical galaxy M87, in contrast, holds thousands.
How did HVGC-1 get ejected at such a high speed? Astronomers aren't sure but say that one scenario depends on M87 having a pair of supermassive black holes at its core. The star cluster wandered too close to those black holes. Many of its outer stars were plucked off, but the dense core of the cluster remained intact. The two black holes then acted like a slingshot, flinging the cluster away at tremendous speed.
HVGC-1 is moving so fast that it is doomed to escape M87 altogether. In fact, it may have already left the galaxy and be sailing out into intergalactic space." CenterForAstrophysics
Is not God in the height of heaven?
Job 22:12
When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers,
the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;
What is man,
that thou art mindful of him?
Psalm 8:3,4
