Apr 3
The Angelfish Cluster, M71 // Doug Lockwood
seen from Iraq
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The Angelfish Cluster, M71 // Doug Lockwood
The Angelfish Cluster, M71 // AdAstraAnimadverto
The Angelfish Cluster, M71 // Tom Wildoner
A globular cluster located about 13,000 light years away, M71 is a relatively "young" globular cluster at only about 9 billion years old. Its young age caused astronomers to believe for decades that this was a densely-packed open cluster like M11 rather than a loosely-packed globular cluster.
M71 was not observed by Messier, but instead by his collaborator and friend Pierre Méchain (1744-1804) in 1780, although the astronomer Jean-Philippe Loys de Chéseaux (1718-1751) found it first in 1746.