M12

The M12 cluster is located a short distance from the globular cluster M10. M12 is a loosely concentrated cluster, classified by Harlow Shapley as class IX. Its calculated distance of 16,000 light-years and apparent diameter of 16 arcminutes correspond to a true size of 75 light-years.

It is a globular cluster very poor in variable stars, with only thirteen such stars recorded so far. The brightest stars are of magnitude 12. The cluster contains approximately 200,000 stars.