Mountain Views News          Saturday, March 8, 2014

DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME 
HOMES & PROPERTY Mountain Views-News Saturday, March 8, 2014 
14DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME 
HOMES & PROPERTY Mountain Views-News Saturday, March 8, 2014 
14
DIAMONDS IN THE TAIL OF THE SCORPION 
THE WORLD AROUND US 
The star cluster Messier 7 Courtesy European Southern Observatory 

 
You can contact Bob Eklund at: b.eklund@MtnViewsNews.com 

 When you hear that someone managed to sell a home without representation, it's likely that the sale 
was to a family member, close friend, or a tenant who was already renting and living there. These 
exceptional cases are not the norm, and there are powerful reasons why it is so difficult to make a sale 
"by owner."

 The biggest roadblock is that For Sale By Owners (FSBOs) aren't included in the Multiple Listing 
Service (MLS) that licensed agents and organizations use. A sign in the yard and an ad in the newspaper 
are no match for the widespread exposure gained from a listing visible on the MLS.
Since the FSBO has no listing agreement providing for a sales commission, many agents won't show 
these homes with no promise of compensation. Again, this greatly reduces the number of potential 
buyers exposed to the offering, not to mention the fact that buyers who do express interest will not 
have been screened by a professional to determine their qualifications.

 Perhaps the most hazardous aspect of selling “by owner” is the potential for legal oversights and 
complications. Real estate transactions are loaded with potential liability for unrepresented and unwitting 
sellers. One overlooked form or improper disclosure could generate an expensive lawsuit.
Just as you wouldn't enter the courtroom without an attorney, you shouldn't sell your home without 
professional representation.

 A new image from the European Southern Observatory’s La Silla telescope in 
Chile shows the bright star cluster Messier 7. Easily spotted with the naked eye 
close to the tail of the constellation of Scorpius, it is one of the most prominent 
open clusters of stars in the sky—making it an important astronomical research 
target.

 Messier 7, also known as NGC 6475, is a brilliant cluster of about 100 stars 
located some 800 light-years from Earth. In this new picture from the Wide 
Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-meter telescope, it stands out against a very 
rich background of hundreds of thousands of fainter stars, in the direction of 
the center of the Milky Way. 

At about 200 million years old, Messier 7 is a typical middle-aged open 
cluster, spanning a region of space about 25 light-years across. As they age, the 
brightest stars in the picture—a population of up to a tenth of the total stars 
in the cluster—will violently explode as supernovae. Looking further into the 
future, the remaining faint stars, which are much more numerous, will slowly 
drift apart until they become no longer recognizable as a cluster.

 Open star clusters like Messier 7 are groups of stars born at almost the same 
time and place, from large cosmic clouds of gas and dust in their host galaxy. 
These groups of stars are of great interest to scientists, because the stars in 
them have about the same age and chemical composition. This makes them 
invaluable for studying stellar structure and evolution.

 An interesting feature in this image is that, although densely populated with 
stars, the background is not uniform and is noticeably streaked with dust. This 
is most likely to be just a chance alignment of the cluster and the dust clouds. 
Although it is tempting to speculate that these dark shreds are the remnants of 
the cloud from which the cluster formed, the Milky Way will have made nearly 
one full rotation during the life of this star cluster, with a lot of reorganization 
of the stars and dust as a result. So the dust and gas from which Messier 7 
formed, and the star cluster itself, will have gone their separate ways long ago.

 The first to mention this star cluster was the mathematician and astronomer 
Claudius Ptolemy, as early as 130 A.D., who described it as a “nebula following 
the sting of Scorpius”—an accurate description, given that, to the naked eye, it 
appears as a diffuse luminous patch against the bright background of the Milky 
Way. In his honor, Messier 7 is sometimes called Ptolemy’s Cluster. 

 It derives its present name from the French astronomer Charles Messier 
(1730–1817). Messier is most notable for publishing an astronomical catalog 
consisting of nebulae and star clusters that came to be known as the 110 
“Messier objects.” The purpose of the catalogue was to help astronomical 
observers, in particular comet hunters such as himself, distinguish between 
permanent and transient visually diffuse objects in the sky. 

In 1764 Messier included it as the seventh entry in his Messier catalogue 
(http://messier.seds.org/xtra/history/m-cat.html). Later, in the 19th century, 
John Herschel (son of Planet Uranus discoverer William Herschel) described the appearance of 
this object as seen through a telescope as a “coarsely scattered cluster of stars”—which sums it up 
perfectly.