#ngc 6093

[quiltofstars]

M80 // Kevin Kurtz

[blasteffect]

Day 135 - Globular Cluster NGC 6093 

Photography: Hubble 

[quiltofstars]

M80 (left) and the ρ Ophiuchi Cloud Complex // Dev (Dave) Prana

Interestingly, Messier failed to notice or write down the large star-forming region right next door to M80 on the sky: the ρ Ophiuchi Cloud Complex!

This is a huge star-forming region only 460 light years from Earth with reflection nebulae, emission nebulae, and dark dust clouds. Why Messier didn't feel like he needed to mention this is unknown to me!

[quiltofstars]

M80 // AnaTa

M80 is one of Messier's original discoveries and is about 32,600 light years distant. It contains at least 200,000 stars and a great number of blue stragglers. These are old stars that appear younger, bluer, and more massive than their other member stars. Astronomers are still debating how these blue stragglers are created.

[chibinotan]

Very Dense Star Cluster

[rjbailey]

A Swarm of Ancient Stars by NASA on The Commons Via Flickr: This stellar swarm is M80 (NGC 6093), one of the densest of the 147 known globular star clusters in the Milky Way galaxy. Located about 28,000 light-years from Earth, M80 contains hundreds of thousands of stars, all held together by their mutual gravitational attraction. Globular clusters are particularly useful for studying stellar evolution, since all of the stars in the cluster have the same age (about 15 billion years), but cover a range of stellar masses. Every star visible in this image is either more highly evolved than, or in a few rare cases more massive than, our own Sun. Especially obvious are the bright red giants, which are stars similar to the Sun in mass that are nearing the ends of their lives. Image # : PR99-26 Date: July 1, 1999