M30

A distant and ancient globular cluster in the southeastern reaches of the constellation Capricornus, near its borders with Piscis Austrinus, the Southern Fish. The cluster falls far outside the plane of the Galaxy, and it belongs to the halo of globular clusters that surrounds the Milky Way. It pursues a peculiar orbit around the Galaxy, implying that it was captured from another galaxy at some point in the far distant past.

M30 lies immensely far from the Solar System at a distance of approximately 27,000 light years, and thus the intensely luminous cluster is dimmed by distance to a faint visual magnitude of just +7.2. The cluster is old enough to undergone core collapse, a process that leads to a highly dense inner core. M30 occupies a region of space a little less than a hundred light years across, though, unlike typical globular clusters, this region is not spherical, but shows a distinctly elongated shape.