M62 (Globular Cluster)
A massive globular cluster in Ophiuchus, toward the centre of the galaxy. Its stars are packed tightly: half its light comes from a ball only about 11 light-years across.
Globular cluster in Ophiuchus. Magnitude 6.6.
Can you see it from Guyana?
From Georgetown (6.8° N) it climbs to 53° above the southern horizon at its highest; from Lethem (3.4° N), to 56° above the southern horizon. It is highest at midnight on the night of 4 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 4.8° north-east of Larawag.
- 10x50 binoculars: A round glow, brighter towards the middle.
- A small telescope (80 to 100 mm): A bright, compact glow; at higher power its outer stars begin to show.
- 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: 7.8′, 25% of the Moon's width (the Moon is about 31′ wide).
- Brightness: magnitude 6.6. Fainter than the faintest stars in Georgetown (4.3) and Lethem (6.0): binoculars or a telescope.
- Distance: 19,700 light-years. The light reaching your eye left it about 19,700 years ago.
- True size: 45 light-years across its catalogued outline; light crosses it in 45 years.
Apparent size from OpenNGC (Mattia Verga), CC-BY-SA-4.0.
What it is made of
- Type
- Globular cluster
- Mass
- About 581,000 times the Sun's mass
- Notable
- Massive: about 581,000 Suns, the 14th 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 6266: 6.03 +/- 0.09 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 6266: 581,000 ± 4,090 Suns), retrieved 2026-10-21; Baumgardt & Vasiliev 2021, MNRAS 505, 5957.
More deep-sky objects: M19 (Globular Cluster) · War and Peace Nebula (NGC 6357) · NGC 6281 (Open Cluster) · Butterfly Cluster (M6) · Globular Cluster M4 · NGC 6231 (Northern Jewel Box)