M17 and M18 (George Simon)

Celestial hemisphere: Southern · Constellation: Sagittarius (Sgr) · Contains: Checkmark Nebula · IC 4706 · IC 4707 · Lobster Nebula · M 17 · M 18 · NGC 6613 · NGC 6618 · Swan Nebula · omega Nebula

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M17 and M18

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M17 and M18

Hard to believe, but I have never imaged M17 previously, for the most part precisely because it is such a frequently imaged target. When earlier this month I decided that it was finally time to capture the Omega Nebula, I cast about for a novel way to present this target. As I searched about its environs in my planetarium software, I noticed that M18 was close enough to M17 to fit into the same field of view through my scope-camera combination. Open cluster M18 is rather infrequently imaged, almost certainly because it is not a visually interesting target. However, I thought that pairing it in an image with M17 would lend it some of the latter's panache, while providing a novel framing for M17. (M18 is near the right edge of the image, at the 2 o'clock position.)

As it turns out, there is good evidence that M17 and M18 are in actuality related to each other. A paper published in 2018 in Astronomy and Astrophysics describes evidence that M18 and the open cluster embedded within M17--the loose cluster of brighter stars at the left edge of the nebula in my image--are, in fact, a binary pair of clusters, similar in age and kinematics.

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M17 and M18

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