This is M24, but unlike most of the items in M. Messier's catalog, it's not a nebula or a galaxy.
Instead it's a gap in the dark interstellar dust, through which the stars in one of the spiral arms of the Milky Way are visible. So it appears to be a star cluster, but it's actually a window to something much larger -- thousands of stars, ten thousand light years away.
Image Credit and Copyright: Roberto Colombari
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