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Welcome to Stellarvue's Stellar Shot Of The Week! If you would like to submit images taken with your Stellarvue telescope, email them to: mail@stellarvue.com. Include the following permission in your email so we may use them: "Attached is my image of (object name). I grant Stellarvue Inc. permission to use this image on the Stellarvue website, in Stellarvue promotional material and in educational programs." Please submit the highest resolution images you can send, preferably in the JPEG format. High resolution images may also be sent in PNG or SVG.

Stellar Shot of the Week

SVX140T - M80

May 5, 2026 - Larry Ammann

Larry Ammann captured this striking shot of M80 (NGC 6093) with his SVX140T. According to Larry: “M80 is a globular cluster in Scorpius that has attracted the attention of professional astronomers due to its relatively large number of blue stragglers. These massive stars should be much younger than the cluster itself, and so they indicate the presence of interactions and collisions in M80's dense core. M80 appears small here but that is only because it lies on the opposite side of the Milky Way's center from us. As a result, its light passes by clouds of gas and dust around Rho Ophiuchi and IC 4603. These reflection and emission nebulae contain some of the closest star forming regions to Earth, with a distance around 450 light-years compared to M80's distance of 28,000 light-years.”

Other Designations: M80, Messier 80, NGC 6093, GCl 39

Details:

Scope: Stellarvue SVX140T + SFFRX-130140 (750mm, f/5.4)

Camera: ZWO ASI6200MM

Mount: Paramount MyT (upgraded)

Focuser/rotator: 3.5” Moonlite Nitecrawler (WR35)

Guider: unguided

Filters: Chroma 50mm R,G,B

Subs: 48x60secs Blu, 48x60secs Grn, 48x60secs Red

Mount and camera control:

TheSky64, NINA

Location: Starfront Observatories