Bill Richards
Well-Known Member
This globular cluster known as Messier 5 is ~25,000 light-years away and contains hundreds of thousands of stars.
Stars in globular clusters are believed to form in the same stellar nursery and grow old together. The most massive stars age quickly, exhausting their fuel supply in less than a million years, terminating in supernova explosions. This process should have left this cluster with only old low-mass stars, which became red giants as they aged and cooled, while the oldest stars evolved even further into blue horizontal branch stars.
Yet astronomers have spotted many young, blue stars amongst the ancient stars in this cluster. Astronomers think that these laggard youngsters, called blue stragglers, were created either by collisions between stars or other stellar interactions. Such events are easy to imagine in densely populated globular clusters.
This is the result of 5 hours of exposure time taken on 2025-05-25.
Equipment and Software:
=======================
Mount: 10Micron GM1000HPS
Telescope: Celestron EdgeHD 8 w/0.7x focal reducer
Auto-Focuser: Rigel Systems nFOCUS
Imaging Camera: ASI2600MC-Pro
Guide Camera: ASI174MM-Mini on OAG
Imaging S/W: NINA
Guiding S/W: PHD2
Image Processing S/W: PixInsight
Exposure Details:
=================
Camera Temperature -15C
Bias: 50
Gain: 100
100 x 180s
Plus 32x Darks, Flats, and Dark Flats
#M5 #amateurastrophotography #astronomy #astronomyphotography #astrophotography #cosmos #deepsky #deepskyobject #longexposure #nightphotography #nightsky #outerspace #photography #science #space #spacephotography #stargazing #stars #telescope #universe
Stars in globular clusters are believed to form in the same stellar nursery and grow old together. The most massive stars age quickly, exhausting their fuel supply in less than a million years, terminating in supernova explosions. This process should have left this cluster with only old low-mass stars, which became red giants as they aged and cooled, while the oldest stars evolved even further into blue horizontal branch stars.
Yet astronomers have spotted many young, blue stars amongst the ancient stars in this cluster. Astronomers think that these laggard youngsters, called blue stragglers, were created either by collisions between stars or other stellar interactions. Such events are easy to imagine in densely populated globular clusters.
This is the result of 5 hours of exposure time taken on 2025-05-25.
Equipment and Software:
=======================
Mount: 10Micron GM1000HPS
Telescope: Celestron EdgeHD 8 w/0.7x focal reducer
Auto-Focuser: Rigel Systems nFOCUS
Imaging Camera: ASI2600MC-Pro
Guide Camera: ASI174MM-Mini on OAG
Imaging S/W: NINA
Guiding S/W: PHD2
Image Processing S/W: PixInsight
Exposure Details:
=================
Camera Temperature -15C
Bias: 50
Gain: 100
100 x 180s
Plus 32x Darks, Flats, and Dark Flats
#M5 #amateurastrophotography #astronomy #astronomyphotography #astrophotography #cosmos #deepsky #deepskyobject #longexposure #nightphotography #nightsky #outerspace #photography #science #space #spacephotography #stargazing #stars #telescope #universe
