Messier 5 is a ball of stars (globular cluster) located in the constellation Serpens (The Snake) and lies at a distance of 24,500 light-years from Earth. Messier 5 contains over 100,000 stars and is thought to be 13 billion years old. Young stars, known as blue stragglers, are present in the cluster and are thought to be created either by stellar collisions or by the transfer of mass between binary stars. 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 combining exposures taken with blue, red and near-infrared filters.