Open Clusters M6 & M7

NOTES DATE: Thursday, May 17, 2001 FILM: Kodak LE400 EXPOSURE: 20 minutes LOCATION: Texas Star Party (Prude Ranch near Fort Davis, Texas) INSTRUMENT: 135 mm lens @ f/4 piggybacked on 10" LX200. PROCESSING: Negative scanned with Epson Perfection 3200.  Further enhancements made with Adobe Photoshop 7.0 COMMENTS: M6 and M7 are excellent objects to observe in an ordinary pair of binoculars and easy to see with the naked eye (especially from TSP).  M7 is the larger open cluster in the middle and M6 is above and to the right. M7 is about 780 light-years distant and M6 is 1960 light-years from our Sun. The golden glow at the top of the photo is part of the Sagittarius Star Cloud, which is an enormous collection of stars toward the center of our galaxy.