Adventures in Astrophotography

Here’s a close up view of M13, The Hercules Star Cluster. This is a cropped version on the previously posted image. It definitely has more information to display. In the eyepiece, Hercules looks like a collection of diamonds on a black velvet background. In the big scope, it is one of the most amazing astronomical views I’ve ever experienced. I think I’ll need to hit this again on a night of rock solid seeing… so that I can really show the pinpoint nature of the stars in the core of the cluster.
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I’m finally getting back into my imaging routine… so let’s start things off with one of the gems of the summer night sky… Globular Cluster M13 aka The Hercules Star Cluster. This is simply the finest globular cluster visible from northern locations. It is so big and bright that it looks good in virtually any size telescope… or binoculars. It’s even visible to the unaided skies if you can free yourself from the obscuring effects of light pollution. This was an ideal object to get things rolling again… as it is such a simple object to image (its visible through the camera view finder) and doesn’t require much image processing to get it looking good. It even looked nice reviewing it on the LCD on the back of the camera.
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