Messier 9 Close Up . ... Credit Copyright: ESA/Hubble , NASA Explanation: Renown 18th century astronomer Charles Messier described this 9th entry in his famous astronomical catalog as "Nebula, without star, in the right leg of Ophiuchus .. But Messier 9 (M9) does have stars, known to modern astronomers as a globular cluster of over 300,000 stars within a diameter of about 90 light-years. It lies some 25,000 light-years distant , near the central bulge of our Milky Way galaxy. ...