I went out to the dark site at the farm, between the towns of St. Pierre and Aubigny, its around 60 km south of my home in the suburb, so the Bortle index is quite good.

This image is my first of M13, and my first of any globular cluster. Visually, I have always found this to be a spectacular treat, a real favourite of mine too.

In this image, I have about 2 hours into it. My friends Dave, Kevin G and Ryan came along so we had a nice star party and let the scopes gather data. Lots of wildlife with Leopard frogs making huge noise in an adjacent pond, and a couple of coyotes on their nightly prowls with their shockingly close and eerie calls while on their hunting foray.

It was a nice evening, no wind, good seeing, one of those that began very cloudy but with a decent forecast, and et voila, the clouds removed themselves and we began around 11 pm.



We had a lot of fun.

From Skysafari:

"The Great Hercules Cluster was discovered by Edmond Halley in 1714, who noted that "it shows itself to the naked eye when the sky is serene and the Moon absent." Fifty years later it was examined by Charles Messier, who cataloged it in 1764. M 13 is also reported in John Bevis' Celestial Atlas. In 1787, Sir William Herschel described it "a most beautiful cluster of stars, exceedingly compressed in the middle, and very rich.""

"One of the reasons M 13 appears so large and bright is that is relatively nearby, about 25,100 light years away. At that distance, its angular diameter of 23' corresponds to 145 light years. The cluster also looks large and bright because it is, intrinsically, large and bright. M13 has an absolute magnitude of -8.7, which corresponds to a luminosity of a quarter million suns."

"Unlike open clusters, such as the Pleiades, globular clusters are tightly bound together by gravity, and contain very old, mostly red stars. The age of M 13 has revised to 12 billion years - nearly as old as the Milky Way galaxy itself."

Thanks for looking, clear skies all.