Messier 70 is a ball of stars (globular cluster) located in the southern constellation Sagittarius (The Archer) and is 29,400 light-years from Earth. Messier 70 contains about 75,000 stars and is thought to be 12.8 billion years old. The cluster has undergone core collapse and the brightness of the cluster increases steadily towards its centre as heavier stars migrate to the shared centre of gravity. Messier 70 became famous in 1995, as it was the target that amateur astronomers Alan Hale and Thomas Bopp were observing when they discovered the comet Hale-Bopp on July 23 of that year. Charles Messier, the 18th century French astronomer, catalogued over 100 galaxies and clusters. Through the telescopes available at the time, comets, nebulae, globular clusters and galaxies appeared just as faint, diffuse blobs. This image was taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Camera for Surveys.