With an apparent diameter of about 17 arc minutes and a visual brightness of 7.5mag this globular cluster M19 can easily be seen in even small telescops in the constellation of Ophiuchus.
It is a very oblate GC,probably cause by strong gas- and dust-absorption along its eastern edge.Over one million stars form this cluster at real distance of 28.500 light-years.
It was first seen by Charles Messier in 1764 and first resolved into individual stars by William Herschel 20 years later.
position (epoch2000):
RA.: 17h 02m 37.69s
Decl.: −26° 16′ 04.6″
image data:
LRGB image with L = synth.of all, RGB = 7x1200s each,a total of 7.0 hours
80cm f/7 AstroOptik Keller corrected cassegrain FLI Proline 16803 Astrodon LRGB GenII filters
Prompt 7 CTIO/UNC Chile,remote controlled
image processing: Bernd Flach-Wilken
the full field of the used CCD-telescope-combination can be seen here.Click here for full resolution.
a more detailed version can be seen here:
part of this Globlar Cluster seen with the HST can be found here