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This Hubble Space Telescope image of M80 features observations in ultraviolet, visible, and infrared wavelengths of light. This data helped scientists learn more about the sequence of cosmic events that lead to the formation of various sub-populations of stars in globular clusters like this one.
Credit: NASA, ESA, and G. Piotto (Universita degli Studi di Padova); Image Processing: Gladys Kober
For more of Hubble's Messier Catalog, visit: www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/hubble-s-messier-catalog
This is a widefield framing of the rich area in central Aurigai that contains the trio of bright star clusters (from L to R): Messier 37, Messier 36, and Messier 38, the latter with its smaller companion cluster NGC 1907. The red nebula at right is IC 405, aka the Flaming Star Nebula. The round nebula to the left of the Flaming Star is IC 410. Between the two main nebulas is an asterism of stars catalogued as Melotte 31, aka the Flying Minnow. The small nebula below M38 is IC 417. The very tiny intense red nebula at upper left is Sharpless 2-235. The dark nebula to the right of M37 at lower left is Barnard 34.
The field of view is 15º by 10º, so wider than most binoculars but similar in extent, to serve as an illustration of a binocular field.
Technical:
This is a stack of 10 x 30-second exposures with the Canon RF135mm lens at f/2 and on the astro-modified Canon EOS R at ISO 800. It was on the Star Adventurer 2i tracker. Taken from home in Alberta in mid-April 2025, with the field low in the northwest, as this was late in the season for winter sky targets in Auriga. The lens had an URTH Night filter on it, a broadband nebula filter.
M22 (NGC 6656) is a rich globular cluster that is visible in the dense star fields of Sagittarius. If you took pictures of it throughout the night, you could look for RR Lyrae variables to measure the distance to it. This is the method Harlow Shapley used -- based on Henrietta Leavitt's period-luminosity analysis -- to measure the size of the Milky Way Galaxy and our position within it. The bright star at the lower right is 24 Sgr.
From 16 90s exposures preprocessed in Nebulosity, stacked and initially processed in PixInsight, with final touches in PS CS 5.1. Taken with a Celestron Edge HD at f/2.3 with Hyperstar and an Atik 314L+ color CCD.
Image center (J2000) is at
RA 18h 35m 31s
DEC -23° 52' 32"
40 x 25s @ ISO 800
Olympus Pen-F Digital
Towa T-300 achromatic refractor (60mm F5)
Like seeing an old friend again after a summer's break.
From my back balcony in Montréal's Plateau neighbourhood.
This is the complex of nebulosity that has become known recently as the Cosmic Question Mark, a good name as its official designations are confusing.
The top arc is usually labelled as NGC 7822, and the middle region as Cederblad (Ced) 214. However, some charts and references label Ced214 as NGC 7822, as it is brighter and might have been the object William Herschel saw when amassing observations in the 18th century for his General Catalogue, in which he describes NGC 7822 as "eeF! and eeL!," meaning really really faint and large! The little "dot" of the question mark is the faint and photographic-only nebula Sharpless 2-170, surrounding a little cluster Stock 18 .
The field is embedded in dust, indicated by the brownish-yellow tint of the background sky at centre, contrasting with the dust-free bluish starfields at top and bottom. Even the star clusters are yellowed, notably King 11 at top right and NGC 7762 embedded in the nebula at right above the bright star. The loose and sparse cluster Berkeley 59 lies embedded in Ced 214..
Most of the field lies in Cepheus but the lower bits of Ced214 and Sharpless 2-170 lie across the border in Cassiopeia.
This is a blend of filtered and unfiltered stacks: 10 x 8-minutes at ISO 3200 through the IDAS NB1 dual narrowband filter, and 10 x 4-minutes at ISO 1600 with no filter, all through the SharpStar 61 EDPHII apo refractor at f/4.6 with its reducer/flattener, and with the red-sensitive Canon Ra, all on the Star Adventurer GTi mount/tracker, autoguided with the Lacerta MGENIII autoguider, taken as part of testing the mount. No darks or LENR applied here, but the autoguider applied some dithering offset between each frame, to largely cancel out thermal noise hot pixels when the sub-frames were aligned and stacked. Taken Sept. 21/22, 2022 from home in Alberta on a very clear cool night.
Shooting and then blending filtered with unfiltered shots provides the best of both worlds: lots of reddish nebulosity set in a sky with natural coloured stars and background tints. I applied a slight level of star reduction with a "starless" layer created with RCAstro Star XTerminator, but with only 25% opacity to just reduce but not eliminate stars. In fact, StarX did a poor job eliminating all the stars in this image. But Noise XTerminator did a great on reducing fine-scale noise. Nebulosity was brought out with DM1, DM2 and colour-range luminosity masks created with Lumenzia plug-in panel for Photoshop. Finishing touches with a High Pass Sharpen layer and a Paint Contrast layer (the latter added with TK Actions panel) boosted fine-scale contrast to the nebulosity.
All stacking, aligning and blending done in Adobe Photoshop/
Taken w/ William Optics Redcat 51, QHYCCD Polemaster, Skywatcher EQM-35, Nikon D7500.
80 x 90s lights @ ISO 800, ~45 dark, ~80 flat, ~100 bias, stacked in DSS and post-processed in Photoshop
Shot from the bird sanctuary on the edge of the Sua Pan near Nata, Botswana in July 2011. This is a stack of 25 10s exposures and 5 30s exposures with darks subtracted. The camera was a Canon Ti1 at ISO 3200 at f/3.5. Preprocessing, stacking, and most processing in PixInsight. Final processing in PS CS 5.1.
We learn best when we play, and this is my latest product from playing with this data.
Image center (J2000) is at:
RA 17h 39m 32s
DEC -28° 18' 56"
Messier 39 / M39 / NGC 7092
Barnard 363 / B 363 / LDN 1007
M39 is an open cluster about 1,000 light-years away. This young cluster, estimated to be 280 million years old, appears as a sparse group of blue stars in front of the rich Milky Way star field that runs through the constellation of Cygnus. Dark nebula structures (interstellar clouds made of gas and dust) are scattered across the field. Barnard 363 is the dark nebula towards the upper right.
Just 1 year earlier, I attempted this target with a 250mm lens on a cheap tracking mount: flic.kr/p/2cbMn7b
Total integration: 5 hours 14 minutes (314 minutes)
11/25/19: 82 x 120 seconds ISO400
11/28/19: 75 x 120 seconds ISO400
Location: Charlottesville, VA
SQM: 19.22 mag/arcsec^2 (Bortle 6)
Camera: Canon T3i (stock/unmodified)
Average camera temperature: 84 F (29 C)
Telescope: Explore Scientific ED80 f/6.0 Apochromatic Refractor (with ES field flattener)
Mount: Orion Sirius EQ-G
Guide scope: Svbony 50mm f/4.0 Guide Scope
Guide camera: Orion StarShoot AutoGuider
Software: N.I.N.A. with ASTAP (slewing and plate solving), PHD2 (guiding), Magic Lantern (image capture)
Pre-processed with PixInsight, processed with PixInsight and Paint.NET
This frames the famous Southern Cross, aka Crux, and the star clusters and nebulas in its vicinity.
At top is the orange star Gacrux; at bottom is the blue-white star Acrux; at left is Becrux, or Mimosa. Next to it is the Jewel Box star cluster, NGC 4755. Below it is the small but intensely red nebula RCW 71 embedded in the dust clouds of the Coal Sack dark nebula. Within the Cross are the clusters NGC 4349 (above Acrux) and Trumpler 20 (below right of Becrux). The small cluster NGC 4609 sits in the Coal Sack to the left of Acrux.
At lower right is the Running Chicken Nebula, IC 2944, with its head and feet being the round nebulas Gum 39 and Gum 41, respectively. Above the Chicken is the Pearl Cluster, NGC 3766. To the right of the Chicken is the cluster IC 2714. Above it is the pair of small nebulas: red NGC 3603 and magenta NGC 3576.
This is a stack of 12 x 2 minute exposures with the Canon RF135mm lens at f/2 and Canon Ra at ISO 800. The lens had an URTH 82mm Night broadband filter on it. The camera was tracked but not guided on the Astro-Physics AP400 mount. Taken from Australia in March 2024 on a night devoted to shooting 135mm telephoto lens fields along the Milky Way.
This frames the spectacular region of the Milky Way near the direction of the galactic centre in Sagittarius. At top is the pink (emission) and blue (reflection) nebula Messier 20, aka the Trifid Nebula. Below it is the large bright emission nebula, Messier 8, the Lagoon Nebula. At bottom amid the rich star field of the Sagittarius Starcloud is the small dense black Ink Spot Nebula, Barnard 86, next to the small star cluster NGC 6520. The Starcloud is yellowed by absorption of blue wavelengths by intervening interstellar dust.
The fainter nebula complex to the east (left) of M8 is IC 4685, aka Sharpless 2-29. The very faint red patch at the right edge is Sharpless 2-22.
The field of view is about 8.2° x 5.5°.
Technical:
This is a stack of just 10 x 3 minute exposures with the Founder Optics Draco 62 astrograph with its fast f/4 Reducer lens, and the astro-modified Canon R camera at ISO 800. It was on the Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer GTi equatorial mount and autoguided with the ASIAir and ZWO guidescope and camera. Taken October 5, 2024 from the Quailway Cottage near Rodeo, New Mexico but just over the line in Arizona. The field was getting low in the southwest on an autumn night. So exposures were kept short for just 30 minutes in total.
Westerlund 1 is the biggest and closest “super” star cluster to Earth. New data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, in combination with other NASA telescopes, is helping astronomers delve deeper into this galactic factory where stars are vigorously being produced.
This is the first data to be publicly released from a project called the Extended Westerlund 1 and 2 Open Clusters Survey, or EWOCS, led by astronomers from the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics in Palermo. As part of EWOCS, Chandra observed Westerlund 1 for about 12 days in total.
Currently, only a handful of stars form in our galaxy each year, but in the past the situation was different. The Milky Way used to produce many more stars, likely hitting its peak of churning out dozens or hundreds of stars per year about 10 billion years ago and then gradually declining ever since. Astronomers think that most of this star formation took place in massive clusters of stars, known as “super star clusters,” like Westerlund 1. These are young clusters of stars that contain more than 10,000 times the mass of the Sun. Westerlund 1 is between about 3 million and 5 million years old.
This new image shows the new deep Chandra data along with previously released data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. The X-rays detected by Chandra show young stars (mostly represented as white and pink) as well as diffuse heated gas throughout the cluster (colored pink, green, and blue, in order of increasing temperatures for the gas). Many of the stars picked up by Hubble appear as yellow and blue dots.
Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/INAF/M. Guarcello et al.; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/L. Frattare
#NASAMarshall #NASA #astrophysics #NASAChandra #NASA #star #starcluster
This sparkling starfield, captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys, contains the globular cluster ESO 520-21 (also known as Palomar 6). A densely packed, roughly spherical collection of stars, it lies close to the center of the Milky Way, where interstellar gas and dust absorb starlight and make observations more challenging.
Interstellar absorption affects some wavelengths of light more than others, changing the colors of astronomical objects by causing them to appear redder than they actually are. Astronomers call this process “reddening,” and it makes determining the properties of globular clusters close to the galactic center – such as ESO 520-21 – particularly difficult.
ESO 520-21 lies in the constellation Ophiuchus, near the celestial equator. Ophiuchus was one of the 48 constellations included in the writings of the second-century Egyptian astronomer Ptolemy, all of which are among the 88 constellations officially recognized by the International Astronomical Union today.
Text credit: European Space Agency (ESA)
Image credit: ESA/Hubble and NASA, R. Cohen
For more information: www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2021/hubble-captures-a...
The teeming stars of the globular cluster NGC 6544 glisten in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This cluster of tightly bound stars lies more than 8,000 light-years away from Earth and is, like all globular clusters, a densely populated region of tens of thousands of stars.
This image of NGC 6544 combines data from two of Hubble’s instruments, the Advanced Camera for Surveys and Wide Field Camera 3, as well as two separate astronomical observations. The first observation was designed to find a visible counterpart to the radio pulsar discovered in NGC 6544. A pulsar is the rapidly spinning remnant of a dead star, emitting twin beams of electromagnetic radiation like a vast astronomical lighthouse. This pulsar rotates particularly quickly, and astronomers turned to Hubble to help determine how this object evolved in NGC 6544.
The second observation which contributed data to this image was also designed to find the visible counterparts of objects detected at other electromagnetic wavelengths. Instead of matching up sources to a pulsar, however, astronomers used Hubble to search for the counterparts of faint X-ray sources. Their observations could help explain how clusters like NGC 6544 change over time.
Text credit: European Space Agency (ESA)
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, W. Lewin, F. R. Ferraro
For more information: www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2023/hubble-glimpses-a...
We had an unusual, clear and very dark sky last night. We are about 3000km from the closest city light... I do not often get this opportunity and had to use it! I tried my best to find the celestial southpole and by analyzing the milkyway for a moment, composed this shot.... and waited......and waited.......!
This is about a 23min exposure at f2.8 with the Nikkor fisheye.
Winter is creeping in on the island and with cold nights I was kind of worried about my baby, standing out there in the cold for so long, but we both survived, there was some condensation on the "eye" which I thought would spoil the shot, but we got lucky...It was worth it!
Enjoy the weekend!
The Seagull Nebula complex
Credit: ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2, Giuseppe Donatiello
View of the evocative and colourful star formation region called Seagull Nebula, IC 2177, on Monoceros (The Unicorn) and Canis Major (The Great Dog) bolders. This view was created from RGB colorized plates of the Digitized Sky Survey 2.
RA: 07h 04m 25s Dec: −10° 27.3'
IC 2177 is a region of nebulosity that lies along the border between the constellations Monoceros and Canis Major. It is a roughly circular HII region centered on the Be star HD 53367. HD 53367 is a young star with twenty times the mass of our Sun. It is classified as a Be star, which are a type of B star with prominent hydrogen emission lines in its spectrum.
This cloud of gas and dust is located about 3,700 light-years away from Earth.
The radiation from the young stars causes the surrounding hydrogen gas to glow with a rich red color and become an HII region. HII regions are so named as they consist of ionized hydrogen (H) in which the electrons are no longer bound to protons. HI is the term used for un-ionized, or neutral, hydrogen. The red glow from HII regions occurs because the protons and electrons recombine and in the process emit energy at certain well-defined wavelengths or colors. One such prominent transition (called hydrogen alpha, or H-alpha) leads to the strong red color.
Within the nebular complex Sh2-292 there are some open clusters and areas of ongoing star formation, particularly along the defined edge.
The densely packed globular cluster NGC 6325 glistens in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This concentrated group of stars lies around 26,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Ophiuchus.
Globular clusters like NGC 6325 are tightly bound collections of stars with anywhere from tens of thousands to millions of members. They can be found in all types of galaxies and act as natural laboratories for astronomers studying star formation. This is because the constituent stars of globular clusters tend to form at roughly the same time and with similar initial composition, meaning astronomers can use them to fine-tune their theories of how stars evolve.
Astronomers inspected this particular cluster not to understand star formation, but to search for a hidden monster. Though it might look peaceful, astronomers suspect this cluster could contain an intermediate-mass black hole that is subtly affecting the motion of surrounding stars. Previous research found that the distribution of stars in some highly concentrated globular clusters – those with stars packed relatively tightly together – was slightly different from what astronomers expected.
This discrepancy suggests that at least some of these densely packed globular clusters – including perhaps NGC 6325 – could have a black hole lurking at the center. To explore this hypothesis further, astronomers turned to Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 to observe a larger sample of densely populated globular clusters, which included this star-studded image of NGC 6325. Additional data from Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys was also incorporated into this image.
Text credit: European Space Agency (ESA)
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, E. Noyola, R. Cohen
For more information: www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2023/hubble-peers-into...
The Pleiades or Seven Sisters (Messier 45 or M45) as seen on the night of 26 September2014 from Eastern Colorado. This is a star cluster in the constellation Taurus.
This is a 32 image stack using Images Plus 5.75, then stretched using Photoshop CC 2014.
Looking like a glittering swarm of buzzing bees, the stars of globular cluster NGC 6440 shine brightly in this Hubble Space Telescope image. The cluster is located some 28,000 light-years away in the constellation Sagittarius, the archer.
Globular clusters like NGC 6440 are roughly spherical, tightly packed, collections of stars that live on the outskirts of galaxies. They hold hundreds of thousands to millions of stars that average about one light-year apart, but they can be as close together as the size of our solar system.
The data used to create this image came from five different Hubble observing programs, four of which focused on the properties of pulsars. Pulsars are highly magnetized, rotating neutron stars emitting a beam of electromagnetic radiation from its magnetic poles. To us, that beam appears as a short burst or pulse as the star rotates. Pulsars spin extremely fast. Astronomers have clocked the fastest pulsars at more 716 rotations per second, but a pulsar could theoretically rotate as fast as 1,500 rotations per second before they slowly lose energy or break apart.
Credit: NASA, ESA, C. Pallanca and F. Ferraro (Universits Di Bologna), and M. van Kerkwijk (University of Toronto); Processing: G. Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)
For Hubble’s Star Clusters page, visit: www.nasa.gov/content/discoveries-hubbles-star-clusters
There are almost too many deep sky objects in this 27° x 18° portion of the constellation Cygnus. The bright star to the left of center is Deneb, the tail of the swan. Sadr, the heart of the swan, is just above center. These stars are bright enough to see from nearly any sky. Aljanah (ε Cygni) is the eastern wing and can be seen as the bright star in the bottom of the image, toward the right.
For most of the other stars, you need darker skies. For the thousands upon thousands of stars that make up the background, you'll need to get away from city lights entirely to see as the brightest glow of the northern Milky Way. Many dark nebulae - or dark molecular clouds - are also visible cutting across this image. These are regions where new stars will form (or have formed) to add their light to our view of our galaxy.
Another good use for this image is choosing larger deep sky targets if you are getting into astrophotography. The easiest target of this sort to go for is the part of the North America Nebula that would be Mexico on a map -- also known as the Cygnus Wall. Of all the emission nebulae in this image (all the reddish areas), this is the easiest target and can be captured with the shortest exposure. The rest of the North America Nebula (NGC 7000) will take a bit longer but is still a good target to start with. Immediately west of it is the Pelican Nebula, which is a more difficult target. Around Sadr, you find IC 1318. Part of this is the Butterfly Nebula, just below Sadr in this image. This would be the easiest portion to capture. The rest of the complex is something I have shot with 4 minute exposures at f/2.3 with a 9.25" scope and one-shot color CCD. There's plenty of good dark nebulae and star clusters in both regions.
Another common target is barely visible along the bottom edge, toward the right. That is the Veil Nebula or the Cygnus Loop. I didn't know before I shot this that the eastern part of the loop (NGC 6992 and 6995) is brighter than the western part. The western part, also known as the Witch's Broom Nebula or NGC 6960, is located north and south of the star 52 Cygni. I need 5 minute exposures with my scope to get NGC 6960 with any detail. It also helps that this part of the sky passes overhead for most of the United States.
This is a stack of 18 150s exposures shot at ISO 3200 with a Nikon D80 at a focal length of 53.2 mm. Images were preprocessed and stacked in PixInsight, where initial processing also happened. Final touches - especially to bring out the nebulae - were done in Photoshop. If you are just getting into astrophotography, I highly recommend you explore this region.
North is toward the top left corner in this image, and east is toward the bottom left
This glittering gathering of stars is Pismis 26, a globular star cluster located about 23,000 light-years away. Many thousands of stars gleam brightly against the black backdrop of the image, with some brighter red and blue stars located along the outskirts of the cluster. The Armenian astronomer Paris Pismis first discovered the cluster in 1959 at the Tonantzintla Observatory in Mexico, granting it the dual name Tonantzintla 2 (Ton2).
Pismis 26 is located in the constellation Scorpius near the galactic bulge, which is an area near the center of our galaxy that holds a dense, spheroidal grouping of stars that surrounds a black hole. Due to its location within the dust-heavy bulge, a process called “reddening” occurs, where dust scatters shorter wavelength blue light while longer wavelength red light passes through. Reddening distorts the apparent color of cosmic objects. Globular clusters are groups of stars held together by mutual gravitational attraction. They contain thousands of tightly packed stars and appear almost spherical in shape. Astronomers used the Hubble Space Telescope to study visible and infrared light from Pismis 26 to determine the cluster’s reddening, age, and metallicity.
The stars of Pismis 26 have high metallicity, meaning they contain a high fraction of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium, the most abundant elements in the universe. Specifically, the stars are rich in the element nitrogen, which is typical of stars in bulge clusters and has led scientists to believe that populations of differently-aged stars are present in the cluster. Pismis 26 has also likely lost a sizable portion of its mass over time due to a gravitational force called the strong inner galaxy tidal field, which the inner galaxy exerts on star clusters in the galactic bulge, causing their outer layers to pull away. Researchers estimate the age of the cluster to be 12 billion years old.
Credit: NASA, ESA and R. Cohen (Rutgers the State University of New Jersey); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)
For Hubble’s Star Clusters page, visit: www.nasa.gov/content/discoveries-hubbles-star-clusters
A glittering multitude of stars in the globular cluster Terzan 4 fills this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Globular clusters are collections of stars bound together by their mutual gravitational attraction and can contain millions of individual stars. As this image shows, the heart of a globular cluster such as Terzan 4 is a densely packed, crowded field of stars – which makes for spectacular images!
The launch of Hubble in 1990 revolutionized the study of globular clusters. The individual stars in these dense crowds are almost impossible to distinguish from one another with ground-based telescopes. However, space telescopes can pick them apart. Astronomers took advantage of Hubble’s crystal-clear vision to study the stars that comprise globular clusters, discovering how these systems change over time.
This particular image came from Hubble observations designed to better understand the shape, density, age, and structure of globular clusters close to the center of the Milky Way. Unlike globular clusters elsewhere in the sky, those near the galaxy’s center have evaded detailed observation because of the clouds of gas and dust swirling around our galactic core. These clouds blot out starlight and complicate astronomical observations in a process astronomers refer to as ‘extinction.’
Astronomers took advantage of the sensitivity of two of Hubble’s instruments – the Advanced Camera for Surveys and Wide Field Camera 3 – to overcome the impact of extinction on Terzan 4. By combining Hubble imagery with sophisticated data processing, astronomers were able to determine the ages of galactic globular clusters to within a billion years – a relatively accurate measurement in astronomical terms!
Text credit: European Space Agency
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Cohen
For more information: www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2022/hubble-captures-a...
The Starfish Cluster (M38) in the center and NGC 1907 on the upper right. Both are open star clusters in Auriga. An unguided image taken last night over Monticello, NY through a Canon 400mm f/5.6 L lens using a Canon 7D MKII dslr camera on a Celestron AVX mount. Thirty 30 second images, eight dark frames, and fifteen bias frames were stacked using DeepSkyStacker, then enhanced with Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop Elements.
As part of ESA/Hubble’s 35th anniversary celebrations, a new image series has been shared throughout April to revisit stunning Hubble targets that were previously released. New images of NGC 346, the Sombrero Galaxy, and the Eagle Nebula have already been published. Now, ESA/Hubble is revisiting the star cluster Messier 72 (M72) with new data and image processing techniques.
M72 is a particularly special target because it was the first image ever published in the ESA/Hubble Picture of the Week series, on 22 April 2010. For fifteen years, the ESA/Hubble team has been publishing a new Hubble image every Monday for everyone to enjoy. This has resulted in nearly 800 images being added to the vast Hubble image archive over the years.
M72 is a collection of stars, formally known as a globular cluster, located in the constellation Aquarius roughly 50 000 light years from Earth. The intense gravitational attraction between the closely packed stars gives globular clusters their regular, spherical shape. Roughly 150 clusters such as this have been discovered in the Milky Way galaxy.
The striking variety in the colour of the stars in this image of M72, particularly compared to the original image, results from adding ultraviolet observations to the previous visible-light data. The colours indicate groups of different types of stars. Blue stars are those in the cluster that were originally more massive, and have now reached hotter temperatures after burning through much of their hydrogen fuel; the bright red objects are lower-mass stars that have now become red giants. Studying these different groups help astronomers to understand how globular clusters, and the galaxies they were born in, initially formed.
Pierre Méchain, a French astronomer and colleague of Charles Messier, discovered M72 in 1780. It was the first of five star clusters that Méchain would discover while assisting Messier. It was recorded as the 72nd entry in Messier’s famous collection of astronomical objects, and the object is also one of the most remote clusters in the catalogue.
The ESA/Hubble science outreach team invites members of the public as well as all scientists who have had (or will have) approved Hubble observing time to contact us if you feel you have aesthetically appealing yet visually informative image data that could be featured in this series!
[Image Description: A cluster of many thousands of bright stars. In the centre most of the stars are blue, while this centre is surrounded by a thick shell of yellower stars, seen in differing sizes according to their position in the spherical star cluster. They spread out beyond the edges of the image, becoming smaller and more sparse only at the corners. A distant spiral galaxy is also visible in the very corner.]
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Sarajedini, G. Piotto, M. Libralato; CC BY 4.0
Et voila, la 3eme photo de cette session d'astro, Messier 92. Je l'ai faite sans grande prétention entre 6h30 et 8h30 du matin car il me restait un peu de nuit et que je ne voyais pas quoi cibler de lumineux (avec cette pleine lune) d'autre qu'un amas.
M92 est un amas globulaire très loin de nous ; il se trouve à 25775 années lumières. Autrement dit, les photons captés sur cette photo, voyageant à la vitesse de la lumière entre l'amas et nous, sont partis il y a plus de 25000 ans. Il y a 25000 ans, c'est la fin du dernier maximum glaciaire, l'homme taille des silex à la perfection et est déjà présent en amérique, bien avant Trump et ses acolytes.
Comme tous les amas globulaire, c'est un objet aux caractéristiques incroyables : dans une boule de 109 années lumières de diamètre, il contient environ 330000 masses solaires (ça signifie en moyenne une étoile tous les 1.18 années lumières dans toutes les directions). Il est très agé : 13.18 milliards d'années (donc preque l'age de l'univers).
Côté photo, c'est pas la plus extraordinaire que j'ai faite, d'autant que ma mise au point a probablement bougé à cause d'une très forte variation de température au petit matin (le froid s'est intensifié). Mes étoiles ne sont donc pas très ponctuelles.
Matériel : monture Skywatcher AZ-EQ5, télescope de Newton Skywatcher 150/750, correcteur de coma, filtre Optolong L-Enhance, Canon EOS 1200D défiltré partiellement, pas d'autoguidage.
Exifs : 182 poses de 30 sec (1h31 de cumul) à 1600 iso, 50/30/30 DOF, température -16°C
Traitement Siril puis Gimp.
Antares Region in Scorpio, with M4 & NGC6144
Issues: Dew problem + Stars with Coma
Nikon D5100 + Nikkor 55-200 à 190mm
45x1 min + DOF
AstroM1
(r2a.2)
This is a framing of most of the constellation of Taurus the Bull, with exposures and processing to emphasize the dim and dark clouds of interstellar dust within its boundaries.
The V-shaped Hyades star cluster (aka Melotte 25) with yellow Aldebaran is at lower right. Two other large star clusters, NGC 1746 (left) and NGC 1647 (right), are at centre.
At top are the very dark and brownish Taurus Molecular Clouds, catalogued by E.E. Barnard in his early-20th century compilation of dark nebulas with various numbers, such as B19, B22, B209, B219, B220, and many others. Above yellow Aldebaran is a compact dark nebula LDN 1546 that contains a small emission nebula Sharpless 2-239. Though too small on this scale to show up here, above that area is the small reflection nebula NGC 1555, Hind's Variable Nebula. But that area in the Hyades is rich in dim yellow dust.
This is a stack of 30 x 2-minute exposures with the rare Samyang RF85mm f/1.4 lens stopped down to f/2.8, on the Canon EOS Ra camera at ISO 800. The lens was equipped with a 77mm Nisi Clear Night broadband light pollution reduction filter which helps improve contrast and reduce sky gradients. The camera was on the Star Adventurer 2i tracker for tracked but unguided exposures over 60 minutes. Taken from home on a very clear night November 18, 2023.
Visible right next to the stinger of the scorpion in the constellation Scorpius, Messier 7 is an easy naked-eye target for stargazers in southern latitudes. The second-century astronomer Claudius Ptolemy first recorded this open star cluster in 130 AD, earning it the nickname Ptolemy's Cluster.
Open star clusters contain stars formed from the same initial cloud of gas and dust and are typically irregular in shape. Over time, as open clusters revolve around a galaxy, gravitational disruptions from other cosmic objects can disperse the stars. Ptolemy’s Cluster is one of more than a thousand open clusters in the Milky Way and contains about 80 stars. Residing about 980 light-years from Earth, M7 likely formed about 220 million years ago.
Astronomer Charles Messier added the cluster to his catalog in May 1764. M7 is the southernmost Messier object, making it challenging to see for those in northern latitudes. It is located close to Messier 6, the Butterfly Cluster, and both can be spotted without binoculars or small spotting telescopes. Both M7 and M6 are best viewed from the northern hemisphere around 10 p.m. in July, when the Scorpio constellation is highest in the sky.
Credit: NASA, ESA, D. Bennett (University of Maryland), and K. Sahu (STScI); Image Processing: Gladys Kober
For more of Hubble's Messier Catalog, visit: www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/hubble-s-messier-catalog
Messier 5 is generally regarded as being one of the best and brightest globular star clusters that is visible in the northern hemisphere of the sky. However, for some reason it seems to be under represented here on Flickr, possibly because it is surrounded by a rather uninteresting field (no background galaxies and no bright, color-contrasting stars).
It is interesting, however, that M5 seems to have a decidedly non-spherical shape. Not only are its stars distributed in a somewhat ragged outline but it appears that there is an elongation than runs from the bottom left toward the upper right in this image (approximating an oval with its major axis at a 45 degree angle).
This image was captured on the evening of June 7, 2015 from my red-zone, light-polluted driveway using a 5 inch aperture, f/5.2 telescope and a Sony NEX-5R digital camera (ISO 800, a stack of one hundred and twenty-three images each exposed for 30 seconds, producing a total exposure integration time of just over 61 minutes).
Image registration, integration, and adjustments done with PixInsight v01.08.03.1123 with final tweaks in Photoshop CC 2014.
This photo is best viewed at full size (1600 x 1200) or against a dark background (press the "L" key to enter the Flickr light box).
All rights reserved.
Nikon D5300 + Zenithstar 73
iOptron CEM26 + iPolar
SVBony CLSfilter
ZWO ASI224MC + WO Uniguide 120mm
40 x 3 min = exp 2h -- ISO 800
AstroM1
(r2.2)
M45 in the Constellation of Taurus,
M: iOptron EQ45-Pro
T: WO GTF81 Refractor
C: ZWO ASI1600MC-Cooled
G: 200mm (FL) Finder and PHD2
GC: ZWO ASI120Mini
Gain: 300; RAW16; FITs
Temp: -25 DegC
Frames: 14 Lights; 2 Darks; No flats
Exp: 10 x 60s; 4 x 300s
100% Crop
Capture: Sharpcap
Processed: DSS; PS, Gradient Exterminator.
This sparkling scene of star birth was captured by the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. What appears to be a craggy, starlit mountaintop kissed by wispy clouds is actually a cosmic dust-scape being eaten away by the blistering winds and radiation of nearby, massive, infant stars.
Called Pismis 24, this young star cluster resides in the core of the nearby Lobster Nebula, approximately 5,500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Scorpius. Home to a vibrant stellar nursery and one of the closest sites of massive star birth, Pismis 24 provides rare insight into large and massive stars. This region is one of the best places to explore the properties of hot young stars and how they evolve.
At the heart of this glittering cluster is the brilliant Pismis 24-1. It is at the centre of a clump of stars above the jagged orange peaks, and the tallest spire is pointing directly toward it. Pismis 24-1 appears as a gigantic single star, and it was once thought to be the most massive known stars. Scientists have since learned that it is composed of at least two stars, though they cannot be resolved in this image. At 74 and 66 solar masses, respectively, the two known stars are still among the most massive and luminous stars ever seen.
Captured in infrared light by Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera), this image reveals thousands of jewel-like stars of varying sizes and colors. The largest and most brilliant ones with the six-point diffraction spikes are the most massive stars in the cluster. Hundreds to thousands of smaller members of the cluster appear as white, yellow, and red, depending on their stellar type and the amount of dust enshrouding them. Webb also shows us tens of thousands of stars behind the cluster that are part of the Milky Way galaxy.
Super-hot, infant stars (some almost 8 times the temperature of the Sun) blast out scorching radiation and punishing winds that are sculpting a cavity into the wall of the star-forming nebula. That nebula extends far beyond NIRCam’s field of view. Only small portions of it are visible at the bottom and top right of the image. Streamers of hot, ionized gas flow off the ridges of the nebula, and wispy veils of gas and dust, illuminated by starlight, float around its towering peaks. Dramatic spires jut from the glowing wall of gas, resisting the relentless radiation and winds. They are like fingers pointing toward the hot, young stars that have sculpted them. The fierce forces shaping and compressing these spires cause new stars to form within them. The tallest spire spans about 5.4 light-years from its tip to the bottom of the image. More than 200 of our solar systems out to Neptune’s orbit could fit into the width its tip, which is 0.14 light-years. In this image, the color cyan indicates hot or ionised hydrogen gas being heated up by the massive young stars. Dust molecules similar to smoke here on Earth are represented in orange. Red signifies cooler, denser molecular hydrogen. The darker the red, the denser the gas. Black denotes the densest gas, which is not emitting light. The wispy white features are dust and gas that are scattering starlight.
[Image description: In what appears as a celestial dreamscape, a blue and black sky filled with brilliant stars covers about two thirds of the image. The stars are different sizes and shades of white, beige, yellow, and light orange. Across the bottom third of the scene is a craggy, mountain-like vista with spire-like peaks and deep, seemingly misty valleys. These so-called mountains appear in varying shades of orange, yellow, and brown. Above their soaring spires is a wispy, ethereal white cloud that stretched horizontally across the scene. Steam appears to rise from the mountaintops and join with this cloud. At the top, right corner of the image, a swath of orange and brown structure cuts diagonally across the sky.]
Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI; CC BY 4.0
Even the great observer Charles Messier had trouble seeing this globular cluster when building his Catalog of Nebulae and Star Clusters. It was originally spotted in 1752 by a French astronomer in what is now South Africa, but it took until 1778 for Messier to catalog it.
This is because, while Messier 55 is large and reasonably bright, it is lacking a dense core and many of its stars are quite faint, making it hard to observe in non-optimal conditions.
For northern observers M55 sits low in the sky, so the view is hampered by a thicker layer of atmosphere, as well as water vapor and light pollution. This hindered Messier’s view from his Paris observatory. When he cataloged it, Messier noted that “its light is even and does not appear to contain any star.”
Though this image shows just a portion of M55, the cluster as a whole appears spherical because the stars’ intense gravitational attraction pulls them together. Hubble’s clear view above Earth’s atmosphere resolves individual stars in this cluster. Ground-based telescopes can also resolve individual stars in M55, but fewer stars are visible.
Even in skies with low light pollution, viewed through binoculars, the cluster will only appear as a round hazy patch. Small telescopes can begin to resolve individual stars in M55, while larger aperture telescopes will pick out low magnitude stars easily. The star cluster is found in the southern part of the constellation Sagittarius and is easiest to spot in August.
The globular cluster is about 20,000 light-years away and has a diameter of about 100 light-years. It contains an estimated 100,000 stars with 55 variable stars whose brightness changes.
Credit: NASA, ESA, A. Sarajedini (Florida Atlantic University), and M. Libralato (STScI, ESA, JWST); Image Processing: Gladys Kober
For more of Hubble's Messier Catalog, visit: www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/hubble-s-messier-catalog
This 100 million-year-old globular cluster is located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way and a birthplace for billions of stars. The cluster is approximately 160,000 light-years away in the constellation Dorado. Typical of globular clusters, it is a spherical collection of densely packed stars held together by mutual gravitational attraction. Unlike most globular clusters, however, the stars of NGC 1850 are relatively young. Globular clusters with young stars such as NGC 1850 are not present in our own Milky Way galaxy.
Astrophysicists theorize that when the first generation of stars in NGC 1850 was born, the stars ejected matter like dust and gas into the surrounding cosmos. The density of the newly formed star cluster was so high that this ejected matter could not escape the cluster’s gravitational pull, causing it to stay nearby. The intense gravity of the cluster also pulled in hydrogen and helium gas from its surroundings. These two sources of gas combined to form a second generation of stars, increasing the density and size of this globular cluster.
In 2021, scientists detected the presence of a black hole in NGC 1850. They have also detected many brighter blue stars (seen on the right) that burn hotter and die younger than red stars. Also present are around 200 red giants, stars that have run out of hydrogen in their centers and are fusing hydrogen further from their core, causing the outer layers to expand, cool, and glow red (visible throughout this image). Surrounding the cluster is a pattern of nebulosity, diffuse dust and gas theorized to come from supernova blasts (the red veil-like structures).
NGC 1850 is approximately 63,000 times the mass of the Sun, and its core is roughly 20 light-years in diameter. Astronomers used Hubble Space Telescope observations at a wide range of wavelengths to image this large star cluster and learn more about star formation.
Credit: NASA, ESA and N. Bastian (Donostia International Physics Center); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)
Hubble studied this star cluster using different filters to examine particular wavelengths of light. This image covers a broad range from the near-ultraviolet to the beginnings of the infrared spectrum. Ultraviolet observations are ideal for detecting the light from the hottest and youngest stars, as seen in this luminous, starry view. For a second image and more info, visit:
www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2022/hubble-captures-d...
For an older Hubble image of NGC 1850, visit: hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/2001/news-2001-25.html
For Hubble’s Star Clusters page, visit: www.nasa.gov/content/discoveries-hubbles-star-clusters
This is a NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope image of NGC 346, a massive star cluster in the Small Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy that is one of the Milky Way’s nearest neighbors. With its relative lack of elements heavier than helium and hydrogen, the NGC 346 cluster serves as a nearby proxy for studying stellar environments with similar conditions in the early, distant Universe. Ten, small, yellow circles overlaid on the image indicate the positions of the ten stars surveyed in this study.
Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, O. C. Jones (UK ATC), G. De Marchi (ESTEC), M. Meixner (USRA); CC BY 4.0
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This image taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows Terzan 1, a globular cluster that lies about 22,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Scorpius. It is one of 11 globular clusters that were discovered by the Turkish-Armenian astronomer Agop Terzan between 1966 and 1971 when he was working in France, based mostly at Lyon Observatory.
Terzan 1 is not a new target for Hubble. An image of the cluster was released back in 2015, taken by Hubble’s Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2). That instrument was replaced by the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) during the 2009 Hubble servicing mission. WFC3 has both superior resolving power and a wider field of view than WFPC2, and the improvement is obvious in this fantastically detailed image.
Text credit: European Space Agency (ESA)
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Cohen
For more information: www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2022/hubble-eyes-a-bri...
I have a fondness for this cluster related to teaching astronomy labs. Our college has a set of 8" Dobsonians that we give our students a chance to use. At first, I will aim the scope so they get used to the view throught the scope compared to the view through the Telrad. I then hunt down some bright deep sky objects for them to view and sketch. Typically, there are eight scopes and 24-30 students, so they have to wait as I get around to each group. Some students decide to explore on their own, which makes me really happy. Usually, they aim the scope at random areas of the sky, but every so often they come across something. This particular autumn evening, while we were looking at objects in Cassiopeia, some students decided to go exploring while they waited for me to find a new object. We had looked at a few star clusters at this point, so they called me over.
"We think we found a star cluster!" they said.
I checked, and indeed they had! Looking through the Telrad, I could see we were on one side of the W of Cassiopeia. I showed them on Stellarium where we were looking and identified it as M103.
Is this a particularly spectacular cluster? Probably not, but I love that I now have this story attached to it. When you get to use a telescope, go exploring. Who knows what you might come across? Sure, chances are very high that it has already been discovered and cataloged, but *YOU* haven't seen it before. Enjoy that sense of personal discovery.
This is a stack of 32 30 s exposures with the Nikon D5100 at ISO 1600 while it was mounted at the back of my Celestron Edge HD 925. You can see that the guiding is a bit off. I took this on the night of 2021-11-10. The effective focal length was 2210 mm. Preprocessing, registration, stacking, and most processing was done in PixInsight. Final processing in Photoshop.
LATEST VERSION: flic.kr/p/2qbsjKf
Messier 7 / M7 / NGC 6475 / The Ptolemy Cluster
NGC 6453
M7 is a bright, loose open cluster in the constellation of Scorpius. It is about 980 light-years away and it is estimated to be 200 million years old. From our perspective, M7 lies in front of the Galactic Center (the center of the Milky Way). As a result, the dense starfield behind this cluster is the richest of all Messier objects and one of the richest in the entire night sky.
NGC 6453 is a globular cluster about 38,000 light-years away. It is heavily obscured by interstellar dust since it lies behind the Galactic Center. The cluster appears as a golden clump between M7 and the left edge of the frame.
2 years ago, my first attempted deep-sky image featured M7: flic.kr/p/2a8e8s2
1 year ago, this was my much-improved result: flic.kr/p/2hc2S3M
Total integration: 16 hours 37.5 minutes (997.5 minutes)
06/22/19: 307 x 30 seconds ISO800
08/17/19: 62 x 60 seconds ISO200
08/19/19: 168 x 60 seconds ISO200
06/25/20: 90 x 120 seconds ISO200
06/28/20: 55 x 120 seconds ISO200
06/29/20: 94 x 120 seconds ISO200
07/14/20: 68 x 120 seconds ISO200
Location: Coral Springs, FL
SQM: 18.18 mag/arcsec^2 (Bortle 8/9)
Camera: Canon T3i (stock/unmodified)
Average camera temperature: 104 F (40 C)
Telescope: Explore Scientific ED80 f/6.0 Apochromatic Refractor (with ES field flattener)
Mount: Orion Sirius EQ-G
Guide scope: Svbony 50mm f/4.0 Guide Scope
Guide camera: Orion StarShoot AutoGuider
Software: N.I.N.A. with PlateSolve2 and PHD2
Processed with PixInsight and Paint.NET
This Hubble Space Telescope image of M14 includes observations taken in ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared wavelengths of light. Astronomers used this data to better understand the formation and chemical makeup of different populations of stars that reside within this cluster.
Credit: NASA, ESA, and F. D'Antona (INAF, Osservatorio Astronomico di Roma); Image Processing: Gladys Kober
For more of Hubble's Messier Catalog, visit: www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/hubble-s-messier-catalog
Taken w/ Skywatcher Evostar Pro 80 ED (w/.85x reducer/corrector & QHYCCD Polemaster), Skywatcher EQM-35, Nikon D7500.
105 lights x 60 s @ ISO 800, ~45 dark, ~45 flat, ~100 bias, stacked in DSS and post-processed in Photoshop
This image shows the globular cluster NGC 6380, which lies around 35,000 light-years from Earth, in the constellation Scorpio (the Scorpion). Globular clusters are spherical groups of stars held together by gravity; they often contain some of the oldest stars in their galaxies. The very bright star at the top of the image is HD 159073, which is only around 4,000 light-years from Earth, making it a much nearer neighbor than NGC 6380. This image was taken with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3, which, as its name suggests, has a wide field of view, meaning that it can image relatively large areas of the sky in enormous detail.
NGC 6380 is not a particularly exciting name, but it indicates that this cluster is catalogued in the New General Catalogue, which was originally compiled in 1888. This cluster has, however, been known by many other names. It was originally discovered by James Dunlop in 1826, and he rather immodestly named it Dun 538. Eight years later, in 1834, it was independently rediscovered by John Herschel and he (similarly immodestly) went on to name it H 3688. The cluster was re-rediscovered in 1959 by Paris Pişmiş, who catalogued it as Tonantzintla 1 – and who, to continue the pattern, also referred to it as Pişmiş 25. In addition to its colorful history of rediscovery, up until the 1950s NGC 6380 was thought to be an open cluster. It was A. D. Thackeray who realized that it was in fact a globular cluster. Nowadays, this cluster is reliably recognized in widely available catalogues as a globular cluster, and referred to simply as NGC 6380.
Text credit: European Space Agency
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, E. Noyola
For more information: www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2021/hubble-reveals-a-...
This sparkling scene of star birth was captured by the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. What appears to be a craggy, starlit mountaintop kissed by wispy clouds is actually a cosmic dust-scape being eaten away by the blistering winds and radiation of nearby, massive, infant stars.
Called Pismis 24, this young star cluster resides in the core of the nearby Lobster Nebula, approximately 5,500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Scorpius. Home to a vibrant stellar nursery and one of the closest sites of massive star birth, Pismis 24 provides rare insight into large and massive stars. This region is one of the best places to explore the properties of hot young stars and how they evolve.
[Image description: Webb image of Pismis 24 with compass arrows, scale bar, and color key. Image shows brilliant stars against a blue and black sky covering about two thirds of the image. Across the bottom third is a craggy, mountain-like vista with soaring peaks and deep, seemingly misty valleys. A wispy white cloud stretches horizontally across the mountaintops. At bottom left, compass arrows indicate the orientation of the image on the sky. The north arrow points downward in the 6 o’clock direction. The east arrow points in the 3 o’clock direction. At lower right is a scale bar labeled 1 light-year. The length of the bar is a about one-eighth the total width of the image. Below the image is a color key showing which NIRCam filters were used to create the image and which visible-light color is assigned to each filter. From left to right, filters are: F090W is blue; F187N is blue-green; F200W is yellow-green; F335M is orange; and F470N is red.]
Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI; CC BY 4.0
The waning last quarter Moon rises in conjunction with the Pleiades star cluster, aka Messier 45. here just having risen out of a band of clouds at the bottom of the frame that was just above the northeast horizon. The Moon was only 2 or 3 degrees above the horizon when I shot this.
This was the evening of August 25, 2024. Earthshine is just visible on the "dark side of the Moon." And yes, the sky really was this colour, as this field was so low and it was lit by moonlight reddened by atmospheric absorption.
Taken from home in Alberta at latitude 51° N.
Technical:
This is a blend of 10 exposures taken in quick succession, from 15 seconds for the stars and base sky, to as short as 1/30-second for the lunar disk, blended with Lights1 luminosity masks created with Lumenzia extension panel in Photoshop. The exposure blending results in an image that better resembles what the eye could see in the scene with such a high dynamic range in brightness.
The Canon R5 was at ISO 1600 and on the Astro-Tech 90CFT refractor telescope at f/4.8 for a focal length of 430mm. It was on the Astro-Physics Mach1 mount tracking the sky at the sidereal rate. Thus the blurred clouds. Finishing-touch Orton-style glow and stellar diffraction spikes added with Nik Color EFX and AstronomyTools actions.
The scattered stars of the globular cluster NGC 6355 are strewn across this image from the Hubble Space Telescope. NGC 6355 is a galactic globular cluster that resides in our Milky Way galaxy's inner regions. It is less than 50,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Ophiuchus.
Globular clusters are stable, tightly bound groups of tens of thousands to millions of stars that are associated with all types of galaxies. Their dense populations of stars and mutual gravitational attraction give these clusters a roughly spherical shape that holds a bright, central concentration of stars surrounded by an increasingly sparse sprinkling of stars. The dense, bright core of NGC 6355 shines in crystal-clear detail as Hubble is able to resolve individual stars in the crowded area toward the center of this image.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, E. Noyola, R. Cohen
For more information, visit: www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2023/hubble-gazes-at-c...
There is Jupiter, lower left, and the Pleiades star cluster (the "Seven Sisters") just right of centre.
The M7 (Ptolemy) star cluster (above and to the left of the top of the lighthouse) is part of the Greater Sagittarius Star Cloud near the Galactic Center of the Milky Way. Above and slightly to the right is the M6 (Butterfly) cluster which sits in the dark area that always shows up so prominently in Milky Way photographs.
To keep the rays of light narrow and the stars from smearing at this FL, I kept the exposure to 1s. This required an ISO of 12,800, which the A7S can do with very manageable noise
Sony A7S, Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L II, 165mm, f/2.8, 1s, ISO12,800