Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Hercules (Her)  ·  Contains:  Hercules Globular Cluster  ·  IC 4617  ·  M 13  ·  NGC 6205
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M13 (Great Globular Cluster in Hercules), Gary Trapuzzano
M13 (Great Globular Cluster in Hercules)
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M13 (Great Globular Cluster in Hercules)

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M13 (Great Globular Cluster in Hercules), Gary Trapuzzano
M13 (Great Globular Cluster in Hercules)
Powered byPixInsight

M13 (Great Globular Cluster in Hercules)

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This image is a little over an hour of exposure time from a moderately dark site with no external filters for light pollution.  It was partly done as an experiment to see if five minute subs would be too long and result in the core of the globular cluster being blown out.  I was somewhat surprised that the image was generally not overexposed and the data was very useable.

Messier 13 (M13), also designated NGC 6205 and sometimes called the Great Globular Cluster in Hercules or the Hercules Globular Cluster, is a globular cluster in the constellation of Hercules.  M13 is about 145 light-years in diameter and is comprised of several hundred thousand stars, the brightest of which is a red giant, the variable star V11, with an apparent visual magnitude of 11.95. M13 is about 22,200 light-years from Earth.

It wasn't until 1779 that the single stars in this globular cluster were resolved.  Compared to the stars in the neighborhood of the Sun, the stars in M13's stellar population are more than a hundred times denser. They are so densely packed together that they sometimes collide and produce new stars.  The newly-formed, young stars, so-called "blue stragglers," are particularly interesting to astronomers.

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M13 (Great Globular Cluster in Hercules), Gary Trapuzzano

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