M12
Gumball Globular Cluster in Ophiuchus

10.1″ f/4.5, Mallincam DS432cTEC
Exposure = 5 sec, Live Stacked frames = 30, Gain = 15 of 250, Whitepoint = 150

M12 is a bright magnitude 7 globular cluster with a fairly distinctive appearance; a very loose collection of stars at two levels of brightness uniformly distributed and mostly resolvable. O’Meara refers to it as the Gumball Globular and I can see why; the different colours and brightness stars are reminiscent of gumballs. The sparseness of M12 is very similar to that of M4; Burnham rated both at IX out of XII on the degree of concentration scale.

The Gumball Globular appears to be about 15 arc minutes across; it is 16,000 light years away and 74 light years in diameter.

North at 11 o’clock, East at 8 o’clock