M13 - The Great Cluster
The unusual run of good weather this summer has resulted in plenty of clear nights recently, but the disadvantage of working away from home is that I have been unable to take advantage of this. However, I now have a couple of weeks off work, so wasted no time in getting the observatory up and running again. This image was captured using a QHY8L and Altair Wave 115ED with 0.79x reducer and field flattener. It is the result of 25 x 180s exposures, captured using Sequence Generator Pro 3, preprocessed using PixInsight and with final processing done in Photoshop CC.
The Great Cluster in the constellation Hercules – also known as Messier 13, or M13 – is considered to be the finest globular cluster in the northern hemesphere. It conatins more than 300,000 stars and is 25,100 light-years from Earth.
