Most globular clusters are nearly perfectly round balls of ancient stars, but Messier 62 is stretched into a comet-like shape with a bright head and a long tail. It is about 12 billion years old and sits relatively close to the centre of the Milky Way, where strong tidal forces from the galaxy pull many of its stars out of place. Its mass is almost a million times that of the Sun, which makes its core one of the densest of any known cluster. Crowded cores see frequent interactions and mergers, and dying massive stars leave behind white dwarfs, neutron stars and sometimes black holes. For years astronomers thought black holes formed in clusters would be ejected quickly, but in 2013 one was found in Messier 62, the first discovered in a Milky Way globular cluster. The image combines ultraviolet and visible light from Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys.

Hampi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Karnataka, India, with more than 1,600 surviving remains spread over 4,100 hectares. It was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1565. Travellers from Persia and Portugal described it as a prosperous, wealthy and grand city with temples, markets and farms along the Tungabhadra River. By 1500 it was estimated to be the world's second-largest city after Beijing, and probably India's richest at the time. In 1565 a coalition of Muslim sultanates defeated the Vijayanagara Empire, its capital was conquered and destroyed, and the city was left in ruins. Hampi remains a religious centre, with the active Virupaksha Temple at its heart.