The Great Globular Cluster in Hercules, also known as M13, is the 13th entry in Charles Messier's catalog of objects that are not comets. It was discovered in 1714 by Edmond Halley. M13 is a gravitationally bound group of stars and contains several hundred thousand stars. It is relatively bright and large because it is only 23,000 light-years from Earth. Toward the upper right corner is a galaxy known as NGC 6207 that is 50 million light-years away. There are several other but very small and dim galaxies in the photograph. North is to the right.
Photographer: Rick Scott
Date / Time: June 18, 2020 from 9:56 PM to 11:22 PM MST
Telescope: home-made 10" f/4.6 Lurie-Houghton
Mount: Losmandy HGM Titan with Gemini 2
Guiding: ZWO 60280, ZWO ASI120MM Mini, PHD2
Camera: Canon EOS 60Da controlled with BackyardEOS
Filter: Optolong L-Pro
Exposure 55 x 30 sec, f/4.6, ISO 800 in raw mode
40 flats, 40 bias, and 40 dark frames
Processed in Deep Sky Stacker (DSS) and Adobe Photoshop CS6.
Updated: June 29, 2020