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Object description
Messier 9 - A Globular Cluster in the constellation Ophiuchus
 

 
Short objekt description:

Our image shows the globular cluster Messier 9 in the constellation Ophiuchus together with two dense dark clouds lying to the west of the cluster. They are LDN 178 and LDN 180, both together also catalogued as Barnard 64.

Messier 9 is assigned to concentration class VIII according to Shapley. It lies about 26,000 light years from the solar system and is one of the globular clusters closest to the centre of our Milky Way. From its distance and its apparent diameter of about 10 arc minutes, the true diameter is about 70 light years. Since the core area is extremely compressed, our image shows an HDR processing of 2 series of shorter (core) and longer exposure times (outer area).

The globular cluster was discovered on 28 May 1764 by Charles Messier, who described it as a small, round "nebula without a star". 20 years later, Friedrich Wilhem Herschel described it as a "very starry, dense star cluster". Of the 5 bright globular clusters in the constellation Ophiuchus (Messier 9, 10, 12, 14 and 107) it is the southernmost. We show an image of Messier 14 here and a wide-angle mosaic of M 10 and M 12 here

The gas and dust of the dark clouds Barnard 64 (LDN 178 and 180) are very dense, this is conspicuously shown by the absence of stars. The many reddish stars south of the dark clouds are conspicuous, which clearly shows that thinner dust and gas clouds lie here as well, which colours the light of the stars reddish by extinction.

Close - northeast of M 9 - is another brighter globular cluster, NGC 6356, of which we show an image here. With a focal length of 850 mm and the APSC sensor of the camera, the fields of view the fields of view overlap, so that we can show both globular clusters below as a mosaic of 2. Here the distribution of the dark clouds is particularly clear.
 
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