Messier 68

Image credit: ESA\Hubble, NASA

 Discovered by Charles Messier in 1780, M68 is a dense collection of stars known as a globular cluster. Mutual gravitational attraction amongst the hundreds of thousands or even millions of stars in such a cluster keeps stellar members packed tightly together for many billions of years.

Roughly 150 of these objects reside in our Milky Way galaxy. On a galactic scale, globular clusters are relatively small. In M68’s case, its constituent stars span a volume of space with a diameter of little more than a hundred light-years. The disk of the Milky Way, on the other hand, extends over 100,000 light-years.

M68 is located 33,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Hydra. It has an apparent magnitude of 8 and can be spotted with a pair of binoculars. The cluster is best observed during April.

Previous Object: Messier 67/\ Next Object: Messier 69

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