Messier 13 - Great globular cluster in Hercules

Image of M13 captured with SPA-2, data from 3 one click observations.

Total integration time 215 minutes.

Sub-exposures:

L: 10 x 300s

R: 12 x 300s

G: 10 x 300s

B: 11 x 300s

Image of Messier 13 (M13), also called the 'Great globular cluster in Hercules', one of the most prominent and best known globulars of the Northern celestial hemisphere.

The cluster has an apparent magnitude of 5.8 and lies at a distance of 22,200 light years, from Earth. It has an estimated age of 11.65 billion years and contains about 300,000 stars.

M13 stretches across 20 arc minutes of the sky, which corresponds to a linear diameter of 145 light years.