SUNSET: 
0
Photographer:
Bruce Waddington
Location of Photo:
SkyPi Remote Observatory, New Mexico
Date/Time of photo:
06/12/2025
Equipment:
12.5" Planewave scope with QSI-640ws camera
Description:
M12 is a globular cluster in Ophiuchus. Discovered in 1764 and described by Messier at the time as a "nebula without stars", it is now estimated to host about 200,000 stars. Like most globular clusters, its star population is very old and the cluster's overall age is estimated to be around 13 billion years. One unusual property of M12 is its low population of very old, low-mass red stars. The current thinking is that up to 1 million such stars have been gravitationally stripped away from the cluster as its orbit around our galactic center has repeatedly taken it through the Milky Way disk.
