The last globular cluster I showed a picture of, Messier 64, was quite far away from the galactic center. Today I'm going to go in the opposite direction with a picture of Messier 9. This cluster is moderately far from Earth at a distance of about 25,800 light-years, but that's because it happens to be one of the closest globular clusters to the galactic core. The distance between M9 and the core is only about 5,500 light-years, which is pretty small when you remember that the Galaxy is about 100,000 light-years across. (For comparison, our Solar System is about 23,000 light-years from the core.) M9 is a average-sized cluster about 90 light-years across, which at its distance translates to a size of about 12.0 arcminutes (about a third as large as the full Moon).
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| Messier 9 in Ophiuchus. |
Partly as a result of being so close to the center of the Galaxy Messier 9 is retreating from us quite quickly, at a rate of 224 kilometers per second (just a hair over half a million miles per hour). It is also located close to the dark nebula Barnard 64, which you can see as the region to the upper-left of the cluster that appears to be devoid of stars. This dark molecular cloud (made up of interstellar gas and dust) is probably something like what the Orion Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula would look like from the other side.
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