The star cluster Messier 3 is a beautiful sight – a sparkly ball of half a million stars. But the view from the cluster would be even more spectacular. M3 is high above the plane of the Milky Way, so the galaxy would spread out below it like a brilliant pinwheel.

M3 is a globular cluster – a dense ball a few hundred light-years in diameter. Its stars are among the oldest in the entire galaxy. They formed just a couple of billion years after the Big Bang. All of the cluster’s heavy stars have long since died, so almost all that’s left are stars that are less massive than the Sun.

Such stars are fairly faint. But there are so many of them that the cluster is an easy target for binoculars, even though it’s about 34,000 light-years away.

Most of the stars and clusters in the galaxy lie in a wide, thin disk. But globular clusters range far above and below that disk. Right now, M3 is about 30,000 light-years above the disk. So most of the galaxy would spread out below it. If there are inhabited planets in the cluster, its residents would have some spectacular views – hundreds of thousands of stars close by, and a giant galaxy of stars arrayed below them.

M3 is in Canes Venatici, the hunting dogs. The cluster is low in the east-northeast in early evening, and is a beautiful sight through binoculars or a telescope.

Tomorrow: super-flares.

Script by Damond Benningfield