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Gem Of The Summer Sky – The Hercules Star Cluster (M13)
by admin ·
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.
Here’s a wide angle view of the cluster…. taken at prime focus through my Astro Physics Starfire 160 refractor. This is one of the first shots since getting one of my drive motors rebuilt. Thankfully, I’d not moved things… so my alignment is still pretty nice. I’m planning to do a bit of drift aligning in the coming days/weeks… to fine tune this even further.
Astro Photo Details:
* Designation: M13
* Constellation: Hercules
* Magnitude: mag 5.8
Astro Photo Processing Details
* Canon Digital Rebel XTi
* 120s at ISO1600
* PhotoShop CS2 Curves (mac version)
* Astro Physics Starfire 160
Tags: Globular Cluster, M13, Messier, Star Cluster, Telescope