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We are on firmer ground with this one, since globular clusters are fairly large and luminous. The only places where our census in the Milky Way is incomplete are regions close to the galactic disk and behind large amounts of absorbing dust, and for the fainter clusters that are farthest from the Milky Way just now. The electronic version of the 1981 Catalogue of Star Clusters and Associations. II. Globular Clusters by J. Ruprecht, B. Balazs, and R.E. White lists 137 globular clusters in and around the Milky Way. More recent discoveries have added a handful, especially in the heavily reddened regions in the inner Galaxy. As a rough estimate accounting for the regions that cannot yet be searched adequately, our galaxy should have perhaps 200 total globulars, compared with the approximately 250 actually found for the larger and brighter Andromeda galaxy.
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Last Update May 13 2007 @ 00:21 AM