The great Globular Cluster in Hercules is a fine jewel to observe in a telescope. It sparkels with an 8" scope or larger like a small pile of diamonds on black velvet.
This dense cluster contains over 100,000 stars and is over a billion years old!
To the lower right of the cluster is the faint spiral galaxy NGC6207 . This 12th magnitude galaxy lies about 45 million light years away. The bright center is actually a forground star in our own Milky Way galaxy.
NOTE: Photographing bright globular clusters like M13 are not the easist subject to capture! The inner core is very bright and becomes overexposed very quickly when using a fast focal ratio scope like the Meade Schmidt Newtonian. It requires a fairly short exposure, while the outer region requires a much longer one to grab all the fainter stars in the cluster. The best way to create a nice image of this fine object is to take two photographs and combine them. This image here is made from two separate photosgraphs. The inner core was only 10 minutes long, while the outer region was from a 30 minute exposure.
M13 Globular Cluster in Hercules (NGC6205)
