M6

Often called the Butterfly Cluster, M6 in Scorpio contains about 80 stars at a distance of about 1600 light years from Earth. The cluster spans about 12 light-years in diameter and is somewhere between 50 and 95 million years old. The cluster is noted for its parallellogram of 4 bright (magnitude 6 to 7) stars, the brightest of which is an orange supergiant at upper left in my photo.

Image taken just after 12:47 a.m., July 28, 2009, with the ST-8 camera on the C-14 operating at F:7 - exposure was 150 seconds