July 19, 2025
In the grand ledger of cosmic time, a human life is breathtakingly brief. But brevity is not insignificance.
Messier 6
Birthday · July 19, 2025
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APOD published July 19, 2025. Credit: Xinran Li. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
The sixth object in Charles Messier's famous catalog of things which are not comets, Messier 6 is a galactic or open star cluster. A gathering of 100 stars or so, all around 100 million years young, M6 lies some 1,600 light-years away toward the central Milky Way in the constellation Scorpius. Also cataloged as NGC 6405, the pretty star cluster's outline suggests its popular moniker, the Butterfly Cluster. Surrounded by diffuse reddish emission from the region's hydrogen gas the cluster's mostly hot and therefore blue stars are near the center of this colorful cosmic snapshot. But the brightest cluster member is a cool K-type giant star. Designated BM Scorpii it shines with a yellow-orange hue, seen near the end of one of the butterfly's antennae. This telescopic field of view spans nearly 2 Full Moons on the sky. That's 25 light-years at the estimated distance of Messier 6.
Image credit: Xinran Li