Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Canes Venatici (CVn)  ·  Contains:  M 3  ·  NGC 5263  ·  NGC 5272
M3, Chris Alberts
M3
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M3

M3, Chris Alberts
M3
Powered byPixInsight

M3

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M3 taken over three nights each LRGB a 120 sec 90 image each

Messier 3, in the constellation Canes Venatici, is one of the three brightest globular clusters in the northern sky. It lies on the border of Canes Venatici with Bootes, about 6° NNE of Beta Comae Berenices

The cluster has an age of roughly 8 billion years and contains mostly old, red stars. But it also contains a relatively large number of so-called "Blue Stragglers", blue main-sequence stars which appear to be much younger than the rest of the globular's stellar population. Once puzzling to astronomers, these stars are now thought to form as a result of stellar interactions; their cooler outer layers are stripped away in close encounters, which occur when they pass through the dense central regions of the cluster.

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M3, Chris Alberts