#messier 10

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M10 // Greg Meyer MD

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M10 // David Brett

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M10 // Peter Knappert

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M10 // Bruno Rota Sargi

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M10 // Michael Maas

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M10 // Klaus Vonderschmidt

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M10 // Vincent Goetz

M10 was described by Admiral William Smyth in 1835 as "A rich globular cluster of compressed stars, on the Serpent-holder's right hip. This noble phenomenon is of a lucid white tint, somewhat attenuated at the margin, and clustering to a blaze in the centre."

This cluster completes an orbit around the Milky Way every 140 million years. Thanks to stellar migration, around 14% of the stars at its core are high-mass binary star systems.

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Comet C/2017 K2 (PanSTARRS) appearing next to the much more distant globular cluster M10 on July 15, 2022 // Skywalker83

This is likely the comet’s first time entering the inner solar system from the much more distant Oort Cloud, taking around a million years to reach its current position between Mars and Jupiter. When it slingshots around the Sun in December 2022, it will enter into an 18,000 year orbit, so see it while it’s here!