Irregularly-shaped open star cluster M23 is a bright, large, rich, and rather attractive cluster in the crowded Milky Way region of Sagittarius. This picture, 35 arc minutes across, just fits to contain the whole cluster, which is 30 arc minutes in diameter. As M23 is pproximately in the galactic plane, the background stars are increasingly reddened by dust absorption, and this image has several black areas where any distant stars are hidden by the thick dust. The bright star to the NW (upper right) is a foreground object. This true-color picture was created from six images taken in the BVR pass-bands at the Burrell Schmidt telescope of Case Western Reserve University's Warner and Swasey Observatory. The images were taken in July 1995 during the Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program.
Credit: N.A.Sharp, REU program/AURA/NOAO/NSF

Amateur mages of M23

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Hartmut Frommert
Christine Kronberg
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Last Modification: March 20, 2001