- This spectacular NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows a bright scattering of stars in the small constellation of Sagitta (the Arrow). This is the centre of the globular cluster Messier 71, a great ball of ancient stars on the edge of our galaxy around 13 000 light-years from Earth. M71 is around 27 light-years across. This picture was created from images taken with the Wide Field Channel of the Advanced Camera for Surveys on Hubble. It is a combination of images taken through yellow (F606W � coloured blue) and near-infrared (F814W � coloured red) filters. The exposure times were 304 s and 324 s respectively. The field of view is about 3.4 arcminutes across.
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- Messier 71 (Wikipedia)
Messier 71 (also known as M71, NGC 6838, or the Angelfish Cluster) is a globular cluster in the small northern constellation Sagitta. It was discovered by Philippe Loys de Chéseaux in 1745 and included by Charles Messier in his catalog of non-comet-like objects in 1780. It was also noted by Koehler at Dresden around 1775. Messier 71 is also known as NGC 6839 and The Bernardo Star, though this identification is very uncertain.