M13, The (Great) Globular Cluster in Hercules
Askar 151phq Refractor; AP Mach2 Mount
ASI6200MM, - Chroma Broadband Filters
R,G,B: (33,36,30 x 180s, Bin 1, Gain 100)
Total integration time = 5.0 hrs (Apr 26, 2025) Vancouver Island, BC, Canada
The stars in globular clusters are said to be gravity locked in orbit around one another by the gravity they themselves generate. This creates a chaotic meta-stable state that allows these clusters to persist after over 10 billion years of wandering through our Milky Way, and perhaps other galaxies. Since their creation, they have gone out of production so we can't see any forming today and pretty much have to surmise both how they formed in the first place, and what makes them so stable.
Typically, globular clusters are simulated using "n-body" type models, which are great for bodies that are not subject to dissipative forces. Even when these conditions are valid, there is still the "butterfly effect" that limits how far one can predict what happens in the future by the arbitrarily limit that one can understand the initial and boundary conditions. This is what make non linear dynamics and chaos theory so darned interesting, as well as important.

Stay tuned for an upcoming analysis at APRealSpace.com