M79 is a rare wintertime globular cluster in the constellation Lepus, just south of Orion. It is a historically important globular cluster. In 1918, Harlow Shapley calculated the distances to globular clusters and plotted their distribution. They had a spherical distribution around the plane of the Milky Way and there were many in the direction of Sagittarius, some of which he found lay at tremendous distances. However, he found only three in the opposite direction all lying at moderate distances. By correctly assuming that the center of the sphere coincided with the center of the Milky Way, he deduced that we were not at the center of the galaxy, but about half way out toward the edge of the disk, giving us our biggest demotion of position in the universe since Copernicus put the sun at the center of the solar system.

This image was published in the August, 2024 issue of Astronomy magazine.