Celestial hemisphere:  Southern  ·  Constellation: Scorpius (Sco)  ·  Contains:  Butterfly cluster  ·  M 6  ·  NGC 6405
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M6, Gary Imm
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M6

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M6, Gary Imm
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M6

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Description

M6 is an open cluster located 1500 light years away in the constellation of Scorpius at a declination of -32 degrees.  It is a magnitude 4.2 cluster which spans 20 arc-minutes in our apparent view.  This corresponds to a diameter of 9 light years.

This object is named the Butterfly Cluster, because its arrangement suggests the outline of a butterfly.  It is a bright open cluster located in the southern constellation Scorpius, in the direction of the Milky Way galactic central core. It is believed that the 80 stars in this cluster formed from the same molecular cloud and are all moving together through space, loosely bound to each other by gravity. Most of the bright, visible stars in this star cluster are hot, young, blue stars, but the brightest star towards the top of the image is an orange giant. Note that the background in this image, towards the core of the Milky Way, contains a significant amount of intergalactic dust.

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M6, Gary Imm