Messier 13 Hercules Cluster

[timc]

Attached is an image of globular cluster M13 (NGC 6205) in Hercules which I imaged from my back-garden observatory in Oxted on 14^th and 15^th May 2020.  M13 comprises approximately several hundred thousand stars and lies roughly 24k light years away and is one of the 160 or so globular clusters that orbit around the centre of our Milky Way galaxy.  Also included in this image are 2 galaxies: NGC 6207 at the bottom right of the image and IC4617 halfway between NGC6207 and M13. To image M13 I used a combination of long and short exposures in an attempt to better resolve the bright core. Total exposure time was 4 hours 1 minute being L 62mins, R and G 60 mins and B 59 minutes.  I used a TEC 140 (5.5 inch) refractor at f/7 mounted on a Paramount MX using a Moravian Instruments G2 8300 cooled CCD camera and Lodestar 2 guide camera.  Image capture was done with Maxim DL and I used CCD Stack2, Photoshop CS5 and Topaz Labs Denoise AI for further processing.  Thanks for looking.

Tim C

[Kevin Phillips]

Hi Tim 

What a cracking image. Beautiful colours. And stars all nice and sharp.  You can clearly see the steering wheel as well. 

Focus excellent and no trails. Heart effort.

Thanks for sharing.

Kevin P

Sent from Outlook for Android

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From: croydo...@googlegroups.com <croydo...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of timc <tcos...@gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, February 7, 2026 8:57:07 AM
To: croydonastro <croydo...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [croydonastro - 8186] Messier 13 Hercules Cluster

 

Attached is an image of globular cluster M13 (NGC 6205) in Hercules which I imaged from my back-garden observatory in Oxted on 14^th and 15^th May 2020.  M13 comprises approximately several hundred thousand stars and lies roughly 24k light years away and is one of the 160 or so globular clusters that orbit around the centre of our Milky Way galaxy.  Also included in this image are 2 galaxies: NGC 6207 at the bottom right of the image and IC4617 halfway between NGC6207 and M13. To image M13 I used a combination of long and short exposures in an attempt to better resolve the bright core. Total exposure time was 4 hours 1 minute being L 62mins, R and G 60 mins and B 59 minutes.  I used a TEC 140 (5.5 inch) refractor at f/7 mounted on a Paramount MX using a Moravian Instruments G2 8300 cooled CCD camera and Lodestar 2 guide camera.  Image capture was done with Maxim DL and I used CCD Stack2, Photoshop CS5 and Topaz Labs Denoise AI for further processing.  Thanks for looking.

Tim C

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[trevsie7]

Hi Tim, Your TEC140 is a very nice telescope. The resolution on your image is really good. A very nice image.