M19 (Globular Cluster)
A massive globular cluster in Ophiuchus, in the direction of the centre of the Milky Way. It weighs about 719,000 Suns, among the dozen heaviest globulars known.
Globular cluster in Ophiuchus. Magnitude 6.9.
Can you see it from Guyana?
From Georgetown (6.8° N) it climbs to 57° above the southern horizon at its highest; from Lethem (3.4° N), to 60° above the southern horizon. It is highest at midnight on the night of 5 Jun, in the middle of its season. The page works out tonight's rise, highest point and set for both towns in Guyana time (UTC-4), and where the Moon is.
What you'll see
- Your eyes: Not visible to the eye. It lies 6.3° east of Paikauhale.
- 10x50 binoculars: A round glow, brighter towards the middle.
- A small telescope (80 to 100 mm): A bright, round glow; at 100x its edge turns grainy under dark skies.
- A camera: Tiny on camera: it needs 2,000 mm or more of focal length on a tracking mount.
How big, how bright, how far
- Size on the sky: 7.5′, 24% of the Moon's width (the Moon is about 31′ wide).
- Brightness: magnitude 6.9. Fainter than the faintest stars in Georgetown (4.3) and Lethem (6.0): binoculars or a telescope.
- Distance: 27,200 light-years. The light reaching your eye left it about 27,200 years ago.
- True size: 59 light-years across its catalogued outline; light crosses it in 59 years.
Apparent size from OpenNGC (Mattia Verga), CC-BY-SA-4.0.
What it is made of
- Type
- Globular cluster
- Mass
- About 720,000 times the Sun's mass
- Notable
- Massive: about 719,000 Suns, the 11th heaviest of the 167 globulars in the Baumgardt database.
What is in it, not measured:
- Old stars: among the oldest in the Milky Way
- Stellar remnants: white dwarfs and neutron stars
- Almost no gas or dust
How we know: Distance from Gaia, Hubble and earlier distances to its stars, combined: Baumgardt & Vasiliev 2021, MNRAS 505, 5957; Baumgardt globular cluster database, combined_table.txt, retrieved 2026-10-21 (NGC 6273: 8.34 +/- 0.16 kpc). True size: the apparent size times the distance (apparent size: OpenNGC (Mattia Verga, CC BY-SA 4.0), commit 4e2398a2). Mass: Baumgardt globular cluster database, combined_table.txt (NGC 6273: 719,000 ± 36,700 Suns), retrieved 2026-10-21; Baumgardt & Vasiliev 2021, MNRAS 505, 5957.
More deep-sky objects: M62 (Globular Cluster) · M9 (Globular Cluster) · Globular Cluster M4 · War and Peace Nebula (NGC 6357) · Butterfly Cluster (M6) · M80 (Globular Cluster)