Happy Father’s Day to all the Dad’s out there! May you all be Hercules for your families!! Put this up full screen!
The Great Hercules Swarm! No worries, no Murder Hornets here!!!
Messier 13 or M13, aka NGC 6205 and is sometimes called the Great Globular Cluster in Hercules or the Hercules Globular Cluster.
M13 is a globular cluster with over 500,000 stars in a tight ball and is located 22, 180 light years from Earth in the constellation Hercules.
The Ball of Stars is about 145 light years in diameter, it is estimated to be 11.66 billion years old.
It shines at magnitude 5.8….barely visible to the unaided eye as a fuzzy patch under dark skies. An easy target in Binoculars or small telescopes.
I often wonder if you were on a planet around a star inside that cluster, how many bright stars you would see in your night sky?
The Little Galaxy above the Hercules Cluster is IC-4617 shining at Magnitude 14.3. Smaller fainter galaxies are in the background as well.
I captured this image from my backyard observatory in Dayton, Ohio on 05-31-2020 for Lum 60 min. and on 06-19-2020 RGB combined for LRGB 2.5 hours.
C6 Newtonian telescope & QHY183M Cooled Cmos Camera, (Lum) for 60 minutes exposure & QHY183C Cooled Cmos Camera(RGB) for 90 minutes. C6 F5 Newtonian Telescope,
Tracking via a Bisque MyT Robotic Tracking Mount.
Best Regards,
John Chumack
www.galacticimages.com
