M12 (Gary Imm) - AstroBin

Celestial hemisphere: Southern · Constellation: Ophiuchus (Oph) · Contains: M 12 · NGC 6218

M12

This Messier globular cluster is located 16,000 light years away in the constellation of Ophiuchus at a declination of -2 degrees. It is a magnitude 6.1 cluster which spans 15 arc-minutes in our apparent view. This corresponds to a diameter of 70 light years.

M12 contains about 200,000 stars and is loosely concentrated, with a Shapley-Sawyer rating of 9 (out of 12). Unlike some other Messier globulars, I don't see much dust here and we have a clear view of a bright cluster. I think the cluster actually has a bit of a star shape but that is probably just something my mind made up out of the patterns.

M12 orbits our Milky Way galaxy in an elliptical orbit in which it periodically passes through the plane of our galaxy near the central core. Observations have revealed that this globular cluster has loss many stars over time from the gravitational pull of the Milky Way during passes near the core of our galaxy. The cluster is now devoid of low mass stars.

2 faint yellow galaxies are seen below and right of M12. These galaxies are about 800 million light years away and are each about 140,000 light years in diameter.

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	9701279
PixInsight job	ZZ2I5YANZ10FQ7GPI42KNQBV6S4OM0SY
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	16h47m13s.531
RA (top/left)	16h48m38s.961
RA (top/right)	16h45m48s.427
RA (bottom/right)	16h45m48s.500
RA (bottom/left)	16h48m38s.517

Dec (center)	-01°56′52″.74
Dec (top/left)	-01°42′42″.39
Dec (top/right)	-01°42′32″.49
Dec (bottom/right)	-02°11′04″.14
Dec (bottom/left)	-02°11′15″.62

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