Right Ascension	17 : 53.9 (h:m)
Declination	-34 : 49 (deg:m)
Distance	0.8 (kly)
Visual Brightness	4.1 (mag)
Apparent Dimension	80.0 (arc min)

Known to Ptolemy 130 AD.

"M7 is a large and brilliant group, easily detected with the naked eye... the cluster is seen projected on a background of numerous faint and distant Milky Way stars." (Burnham).

This splendid cluster was known to Ptolemy who mentioned it about 130 AD, who described it as the "nebula following the sting of Scorpius". The description may also include M6 but this is uncertain. M7 was observed by Hodierna before 1654 who counted 30 stars, and included in Lacaille's catalog of southern objects as Lac II.14.

M7 consists of about 80 stars brighter mag 10 in a field of about 1.3 degrees apparent diameter which at its distance of perhaps 800 light years corresponds to a linear extension of 18 or 20 light years. It was classified as of Trumpler type I,3,m or I,3,r. This group is approaching us at 14 km/sec. The brightest star is a yellow giant (spectral type gG8, mag 5.6), the hottest main sequence star is of spectral type B6 (mag 5.89). M7's age was estimated at 220 million years, both according to the Sky Catalog 2000 and the new calculation of the Geneva Group of G. Meynet. Recent work suggests a slightly larger distance of 1000 l.y., which would increase the size to 25 l.y. but would not affect the age.

Ake Wallenquist found that this is one of the clusters with the highest degree of concentration toward the center. M7's integrated apparent magnitude is discordantly given at values between 3.3 and 5.0.

Observing Reports for M7 (IAAC Netastrocatalog)

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Hartmut Frommert (spider@seds.org)
Christine Kronberg (smil@lrz.uni-muenchen.de)

Last Modification: 9 Dec 1999, 22:58 MET