HST OBSERVATIONS OF THE CORE OF THE GLOBULAR-CLUSTER NGC-6624

We have used the Faint Object Camera on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) to observe three fields near the center of the post-collapse globular cluster NGC 6624 in B and V. We use individual stellar positions and a maximum-likelihood technique to measure a position for the cluster center. We then transfer this position and the position of the x-ray source 4U 1820-30 to right ascension and declination, and correct an error of 1″.8 in an earlier paper. From star counts, we obtain a density profile, with a power-law cusp of slope -0.84±0.16. No flat core is evident. We construct color-magnitude diagrams down to the main-sequence turnoff near the cluster center, and more than three magnitudes below the turnoff in the outermost field at r=28″. The former diagram reveals a central population of blue stragglers, which has not previously been observed in this cluster. These blue stragglers are quite similar in specific frequency to those recently observed by HST in the core of 47 Tuc, and their presence adds to the growing evidence of stellar interactions in dense globular-cluster cores.