MISSION
To carry out activities of teaching, research, extension and scientific dissemination with independence and own resources, pursuing the excellence and improvement of education, aiming to combat obscurantism by encouraging scientific culture.
OBJECTIVES
Credit & Copyright: Martin Pugh
OMEGA CENTAURI NETWORK promotes courses, events, lectures, seminars, workshops, field trips, cinema cycles, study trips, and scientific-cultural tourism tours. It also publishes books and articles, conducts and supports scientific research, and interacts with the various media components in general.
Images of the globular cluster of stars Omega Centauri (NGC 5139), situated in the sky of the southern hemisphere. Discovered in 1677 by the English astronomer Edmond Halley (1656-1742) while observing on the island of St. Helena, it had already been included in Ptolemy’s catalog (90 – 168) as a star. This object contains 5 million solar masses within an apparent diameter of just over half a degree, about 16,000 light-years away, housed in the rarefied halo of our Milky Way galaxy. Its actual diameter is about 90 light-years, and its age is estimated to be approximately 12 billion years.