Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Canes Venatici (CVn)  ·  Contains:  M 3  ·  NGC 5263  ·  NGC 5272
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M3, Marc Mantha
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M3

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M3, Marc Mantha
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M3

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Description

Here is M3, the first Messier object discovered by Charles Messier on May 3, 1764. At first, he thought he was looking at a nebula without stars. This was corrected by William Herschel around 1784 when he was able to revolve the stars when observing it. It is one of the best studied global clusters.

This cluster is one of the largest and brightest, and is made up of around 500,000 stars. It is estimated to be 11.4 billion years old and it is centered at 32 600 light years away from Earth.

This is another image that I took from my backyard over multiple session. Galaxy season is more of a cluster season for me, I need to scope upgrade to have better definitions on those galaxies. I was only able to keep half of the data that I captured due to high clouds.

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M3, Marc Mantha