The Butterfly Cluster

M6 - open cluster

Image copyright: Andre Potgieter

The Butterfly Cluster, number six on Charles Messier’s famous list of deep sky objects, is an open cluster near the tail of Scorpius. It is about 100 million years old, contains over 330 suns (mostly hot blue-white stars) and is a little under 1600 light years away.
If emission nebulae like the great nebula in Orion are stellar nurseries, then open clusters are stellar kindergartens: The stars have been shining for long enough that their radiation and stellar winds have blown away most of the gas and dust that birthed them, but they still live at home with their siblings. The individual stars of the cluster, which are only loosely gravitationally bound to each other, will gradually disperse until the cluster is no more.

25 x 360 Sec
ISO 800
Dark's & Flats used.
Sw200p
Eq6
Canon 1100D