M3 — A City of Ancient Suns

by Bob Meincke

Objects in field: M 3, NGC 5272

Equipment: Askar FRA400, ZWO ASI1600MM Pro

Integration: 6h 17m

Messier 3 is one of the great globular clusters of the northern sky, located in Canes Venatici. It contains hundreds of thousands of old stars packed into a dense spherical swarm, with a bright central core fading outward into a wide halo of resolved points. For this version, I wanted to keep the cluster controlled rather than blown out, while preserving the surrounding diffraction-spiked field…