Messier 13 (M13), also known as the Great Globular Cluster in Hercules, is one of the brightest and best known globular clusters in the northern sky. The cluster has an apparent magnitude of 5.8 and lies at a distance of 22,200 light years from Earth. This cluster has an estimated age of 11.65 billion years and contains about 300,000 stars. Feel free to count them if you don’t believe me. There are also a lot of small galaxies visible in the background of the full FOV image.
This image is a reprocessed version from older 2018 data combined with a recent acquisition. I also tried to get the most out of the resolving power of my telescope, using drizzling @ 2x and applying deconvolution on the linear image. Please check the full resolution version to appreciate it to its fullest.
Cropped detail of Messier 13
Telescope: 16″ f3.75 Dream Scope
Camera: FLI ML16803
Mount: ASA DDM85
Exposure: 7 hours (50x300s L + 3x12x300s RGB)
Date: April 2018 – March 2021
Location: Southern Alps, France
One Reply to “Messier 13 – The Hercules Globular Cluster Revisited”