Moon, Mercury, and M22

In this telephoto image from Libya the two-day old Moon is accompanied by planet Mercury, the brighter “star” just above the western horizon. Surprisingly captured in this short exposure image is the globular star cluster M22 in Sagittarius. It is visible as a little halo below the Moon but in fact the cluster is over 10,000 light years away, which is 300 billion times further away than the Moon! This little halo is a cluster of more than 100,000 stars. Click on the second photo to see a wider view of this scene.