Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Canes Venatici (CVn)  ·  Contains:  M 3  ·  NGC 5272
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M3, Jeff Rothstein
M3
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M3

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
M3, Jeff Rothstein
M3
Powered byPixInsight

M3

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Description

Messier 3 is a bright globular cluster in Canes Venatici, and some amateurs consider it the finest in the Northern Hemisphere after M13.  Like all globular clusters it is ancient, estimated to be over 11 billion years old.

This image comes from just half a night of subframes.  I used NINA's Imaging Statistics box to be sure a 240s exposure would not saturate too many pixels.  I processed the image entirely in PixInsight.  This is the first globular cluster I've worked on since the recent upgrade to BlurXterminator and the new version performs much better than the old, as Russ Croman shows on the R-C Astro website.

As always, I invite suggestions for improvement.

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M3, Jeff Rothstein