Messier 80

Messier 80 (also known as M80 or NGC 6093) is a globular cluster located 32,620 light years away in the constellation Scorpius, it was discovered by Charles Messier in 1781, it was also one of his first discoveries.

M80 can be seen in a field of the Milky Way that has many nebulae. It is located between Antares and Beta Scorpii when looking from Earth. With less light pollution, it can be seen as a round patch of light with a small telescope below the 67th parallel north.

It one of the densest globular cluster in the Milky Way. It is at twice the distance of the Galactic Center in regions known as the Galactic halo. It contains many hundred thousand stars and has an apparent angular diameter of 10 arcminutes. It is 32,600 light years away, making its true diameter around 95 light years.

M80 contains a lot of blue stragglers. Blue stragglers are stars that seem younger than the rest. It is thought that this is because they lost some layers due to encounters or collisions with other stars in the dense cluster. With the help of the Hubble Space Telescope, images reveal many of these stragglers in the center of the cluster, suggesting a high rate of capture and collisions.

On May 21, 1860, a nova was found in M80 that had an magnitude of +7.0 and was possible to see it using telescopes, binoculars and people with good vision. This variable star, named T Scorpii, reached an absolute magnitude of −8.5 and briefly shone brighter than the cluster.

 References 

Category:Star clusters
Category:Scorpius