Messier 23 - The Open Cluster in Sagittarius

Messier 23 is an open star cluster in the constellation Sagittarius, located slightly north of M20 and M21. It contains around 200 stars and was discovered in 1764 by Charles Messier himself. The cluster has an apparent magnitude of 5.5, which means it is quite bright. It is a typical Messier open cluster. I might revisit this object in the future to capture more data on the faint dust lanes in the background.

I captured this image during a Messier Marathon in August 2025.