Messier 30

Posted by SERGIO EGUIVAR
on Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Globular cluster Messier 30 covers a distance of about 90 light years across, and appears to us under an angular diameter of about 12.0 arc minutes. It is fairly dense and a fine object in even small telescopes. The core of M30 exhibits an extremely dense stellar population, and has undergone a core collapse, similar to at least 20 other of the 150 globulars in the Milky Way Galaxy, including M15, M70, and possibly M62.  

M30 was one of the original discoveries of Charles Messier, who catalogued it on August 3, 1764 and like most of his globulars, described it as round nebula, containing no stars. It was first resolved by William Herschel around 1784. At the right of M30 we have 41 Capricorni shining in magnitude 5.25. The star is a good reference for observes to find M30 since it is only at 22 arc minutes.

The image was taken with a 6” OOUK Newtonian and a QSI 583WS riding on a SW NEQ6, from my home backyard 15 km north to Buenos Aires. Total exposure time 3 hours through Baader LGRB filter set

 

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