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M62, Gary Imm

M62

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M62, Gary Imm

M62

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Description

This object is a large, beautiful globular star cluster located in the southern constellation of Ophiuchus, the Serpant Bearer. The cluster lies just over 20,000 light years from Earth and occupies an area of roughly half the size of the full Moon. M62 has a highly irregular shape for a globular cluster. In the image, the lower left third of the cluster appears to be largely missing. This may be a result of gravitational forces due to the cluster lying near the galactic center of our Milky Way galaxy. M62 lies only about 6,000 light years from the center of the Milky Way and is one of the closest Messier globular clusters to the galactic center. The cluster contains about 150,000 stars. This is one of the globular clusters which has such a dense central core that the core stars are not fully resolved in my image.

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