NGC 6496 (2014)

An interesting globular cluster situated toward the galactic core, NGC 6496 shines betwixt many of the stars within our own Milky Way. I would describe the colors here as dubious at best, but bluer stars are roughly brighter in UV light while red stars are brighter in near-infrared. Anywhere away from the center of the image you will notice the colors get weird and in some places are even monochrome. The datasets do not overlap perfectly but that is ok because even some funky Hubble data is still pretty darn good.

This image was possible thanks to proposals 10775 (An ACS Survey of Galactic Globular Clusters) and 13297 (The HST Legacy Survey of Galactic Globular Clusters: Shedding UV Light on Their Populations and Formation)

The following datasets were used roughly in these channels. It’s important to note that this is a complete hodge podge and the datasets did not overlap with one another in many places and I had to mix the channels in those places. The F606W data is also used to brighten the blue channel because it wasn’t bright and glowy enough to match the other two. Sorry if this explanation is hard to follow.

Red: ACS/WFC F814W
Green: ACS/WFC F606W
Blue: WFC3/UVIS F275W + F336W + F438W

North is NOT up. It is 44.3° clockwise from up.

Copyright information:
Hubble data is public domain, but I put a lot of work into combining it into beautiful color images. The minimal credit line should read: NASA / ESA / J. Schmidt

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.