M12, Gumball Cluster (Doug Summers)

Celestial hemisphere: Southern · Constellation: Ophiuchus (Oph) · Contains: M 12 · NGC 6218

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M12, Gumball Cluster

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M12, Gumball Cluster

In one of the great ironies of describing a discovery incorrectly, Charles Messier described M12 as "a nebula without stars". It's a good indication of how much better our gear is than what was available in 1764! M12 is actually a pretty good looking globular cluster. It's 23K light-years distant in Ophiuchus and contains ~200,000 stars. It has an estimated diameter of 75 light-years. It's not one of the densest clusters, and has been found to have a low abundance of low mass stars. Astronomers think this implies that missing low mass stars have been ripped from the cluster during successive orbits in the galaxy. In any case, the cluster can be resolved to the core fairly easily.

In this image, I've cropped a fair amount to get a better look at the interior. There's a nice pair of distant galaxies grazing the lower right of the cluster.

The OSC Club (One Shot Camera)
Celestron RASA

Globular Clusters
Messier Objects

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The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

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Status	Basic success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	8008648
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
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M12, Gumball Cluster

M12, Gumball Cluster

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M12, Gumball Cluster

M12, Gumball Cluster

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