The complex diversity of the gorgeous globular cluster M5

One of my favorite things about astronomy as a field of science is how, after enough evidence piles up about a topic, we can change our minds about it.

Globular clusters are a perfect example of this. Globulars are star clusters, containing hundreds of thousands or, for the biggest ones, even millions of stars all packed into a roughly spherical volume ranging from a couple of dozen to a couple of hundred light years across.