Hubble image captures puzzling star group

GREENBELT, Md., Feb. 9 (UPI) -- U.S. astronomers say a distant galaxy puzzles them because it contains a high number of stars younger than their neighbors, which goes against current theory.

The deep space object, captured in a Hubble space telescope image, is called NGC 6752 and is a globular cluster more than 10 billion years old.

That makes it one of the oldest collections of stars knows, blazing for more than twice as long as our solar system has existed, a NASA release said.

One possible reason, astronomers said, is that a very large number of the stars -- up to 38 percent -- in the cluster's core are in binary systems.

Collisions between stars in this turbulent area could produce the blue stragglers that are so prevalent, they said.