This is the "Rose Cluster" or "Messier 5" (aka "M5"), photographed from my driveway last night.

The stars we see in this photo have been around for more than 12 billion years (about 3 times older than our solar system). These stars are about 25,000 light years from us on Earth. The cluster itself is 165 light years wide (you'd have to travel at the speed of light for 165 years to go from one side to the other). This is one of the oldest known "globular clusters."

Charles Messier (1730-1817), the famous astronomer who is known for his catalog of the night sky, referred to Messier 5 as "A fine nebula which I am sure contains no star." His observation in 1764 was made with a 12 inch telescope.

About 30 years later, in 1791, William Herschel looked at it with a 48 inch telescope (which was the largest telescope in the world at the time, but was difficult to work with), and described M5 as containing about 200 stars and said that "the middle [is] so compressed that it is impossible to distinguish its components."

Fast forward to today (about 250 years later)--we can see thousands of individual stars in M5 with a ~42 inch telescope anyone can buy on the internet. Simply amazing progress in a relatively short time.

Star clusters cause me to think about the majesty of the universe, and specifically, how tiny we are as humans floating through space on this Earth rock. I imagine if we could travel the 25,000 light years to this star cluster, we would be dazzled by its brightness and grandeur.

Full size photo here: https://astrob.in/full/d04tyw/0/ (click "Full Resolution" at the top right).
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