About 145 light-years in diameter, M13 is composed of several hundred thousand stars. M13 is 22,200–25,000 light-years away from Earth, and the globular cluster is one of over one hundred that orbit the center of the Milky Way.
Compared to the stars in the neighborhood of the Sun, the stars of the M13 population are more than a hundred times more densely packed. They are so close together that they sometimes collide and produce new stars. The newly formed, young stars, so-called "blue stragglers", are particularly interesting to astronomers.
The small and faint galaxy to the "left" of M13 in this image is IC 4617, which is 500 million light-years away from Earth (personal record?).
The 1974 Arecibo message, which contained encoded information about the human race, DNA, atomic numbers, Earth's position and other information, was beamed from the Arecibo Observatory radio telescope towards M13 as an experiment in contacting potential extraterrestrial civilizations in the cluster. The cluster will move through space during the transit time; opinions differ as to whether or not the cluster will be in a position to receive the message by the time that it arrives. (Source: Wikipedia)
I still have to find a way to perfect my collimation for the RC, without wasting precious clear skies and nighttime to star collimate (not that I ever knew what I was doing). I think the current method I am doing during the day is getting me close enough. Time to invest in some lasers? Stock permitting
Looking at my account, I noticed that all of my attempts at clusters were in May, the bane of imaging from a balcony. So here's my globular cluster attempt of 2022.
Clear Skies!
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