M13

The Great Cluster in Hercules

Object	M13 -- Globular Cluster
Constellation	Hercules
Date Aquired	05/23/2002
Camera	ST-7E with CFW-8
Exposure	10x3Min L, 5X3Min R (2x2), 5X3Min G (2x2), 5X5Min B (2x2)
Telescope	Meade Starfinder 10" @ f/4.5
Mount	Losmandy G11

M13 is such a cool object that it is hard to take a bad picture of it.  Also known as the Great Globular Cluster in Hercules, this ball of several hundred thousand stars lies about 25,000 light year above the galactic plane. When our galaxy was young, it was basically a huge ball of stars.  After a few billion years of rotating, though, most of the stars in the galaxy ended up in the flattened pancake shaped disk of the galactic plane, that you see in pictures.  For some reason that I don't know, relatively little bunches of stars did not end up in the galactic plane, but ended up grouping together and orbiting the galaxy like moons, and these are called Globular Clusters.  The stars in the center of the cluster are concentrated 500 times more densely than stars in our neck of the galaxy.  Since Globulars are devoid of the dust and gas needed to create new stars, no new stars have been created in the cluster since their separation from the rest of the galaxy.  All the stars in the cluster are as old as the Milky Way itself, about 14 billion years.

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