Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Canes Venatici (CVn)  ·  Contains:  M 3  ·  NGC 5272
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Newtonian image of globular cluster M3, Tim Hawkes
Newtonian image of globular cluster M3
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Newtonian image of globular cluster M3

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
Newtonian image of globular cluster M3, Tim Hawkes
Newtonian image of globular cluster M3
Powered byPixInsight

Newtonian image of globular cluster M3

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Description

Globular cluster M3 is about 90 light years across and at a distance of about 32600 light years.   M3 is about 11.4 billion years old and comprises about 500 thousand stars with an overall metallicity  3-5% of solar.  It contains at least 274 variable stars.  The core is compact and many of the stars appear to be blue stragglers presumably arising from collisions at the high star density and/ or due to gravitational perturbation of binaries.

Here the luminosity of a sharp and higher resolution  (3s subframe,  0.405 arcsec/ pixel, FWHM ~ 1.6 after deconvolution) image  was transferred to the lower resolution (0.81 arsec/ pixel) RGB image  using tools in PixInsight.

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Newtonian image of globular cluster M3, Tim Hawkes