Celestial hemisphere:  Southern  ·  Constellation: Scorpius (Sco)  ·  Contains:  HD147491  ·  HD147592  ·  HD147649  ·  M 4  ·  NGC 6121
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M4, Gary Imm
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M4

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
M4, Gary Imm
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M4

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Description

This mag 5.4 globular cluster is loosely constructed, with a Shapley–Sawyer rating of 9 (out of 12).  At a distance of about 7,200 light-years, M4 is one of the closest Messier objects to earth.  It is 26 arc-minutes wide and has a diameter of 50 light years.

Note the contrast of hot (bluish) and cool (reddish) stars surrounding the core. You can easily see a bar structure horizontally across its central core region, consisting of 11th magnitude stars. Messier 4 has roughly the same apparent size as our full moon and is visible to the naked eye, but only in exceptionally good conditions. This object is relatively small for a globular cluster and contains about 20,000 stars, which is far fewer than the largest globular clusters which can contain up to 500,000 stars.

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