Discovered in 1780 by the astronomer Pierre Mecain,6 weeks before Charles Messier saw it first.

With an apparent diamaeter of 6.5´arc-minutes and a magnitude of 9.5mag it is not an eyecatcher for visual observers,but nevertheless already visible in 2-3 inch-instruments.

Its real distance to our sun amounts to about 60.000 light-years with a total mass of about 170.0000 solar masses.Over 40 variable stars have been identified in M72.

position (epoch2000):

Right ascension: 20h 53m 27.70s
Declination:          –12° 32′ 14.3"

image data:

south is up

LRGB image with L = 7x1200s, RGB = 8x1200s each,a total of 10.3 hours

80cm f/7 AstroOptik Keller corrected cassegrain

FLI Proline 16803 Astrodon LRGB Gen-II filters

Prompt 7 CTIO/UNC Chile,remote controlled

image processing: Bernd Flach-Wilken

here is a 18.5 arc-minutes wide squared field of M72.

For a full-res. picture click HERE

here you see a larger picture of this object: