Wow, number twenty-five already. It seems like just yesterday that I decided to make a photographic catalog of the Milky Way's globular clusters, but it's already been a year. Today's picture is the moderately-sized cluster NGC 6293 in the constellation Ophiuchus, the Serpent Bearer. NGC 6293 is pretty similar to the cluster I showed off last time, NGC 6541. NGC 6293 is a bit further away at 31,000 light-years (compared to 22,800), and also a bit physically smaller at 71 light-years in diameter (compared to 100), which combine to give it much smaller size on the sky, only 7.9 arc-minutes compared to 15.0.
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| Globular cluster NGC 6293 in Ophiuchus. |
Both NGC 6293 and 6541 are at about the same distance from the galactic center: 6,200 light-years for NGC 6293, and 6,800 for NGC 6541. Interestingly, despite the fact that NGC 6293 is both fainter and smaller than 6541, it was discovered first, in 1785 by William Herschel (discoverer of the planet Uranus), while NGC 6541 wasn't discovered until 1826. This may have something to do with the fact that NGC 6541 is much more southerly than 6293, which would make it appear much fainter and harder to see for the northern European astronomers who discovered both of them.
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