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Messier 13 - The Hercules Globular Cluster
Credit: ZTF, Giuseppe Donatiello
J2000 RA 16h 41m 41.24s Dec +36° 27′ 35.5″
Messier 13 (M13), or NGC 6205, is a globular cluster of about 300,000 stars in Hercules, discovered by Edmond Halley in 1714, and catalogued by Charles Messier on June 1, 1764.
M13 is about 145 light-years in diameter and at 25,100 light-years away from Earth.
The Arecibo message of 1974, which contained encoded information about the human race, DNA, atomic numbers, Earth's position and other information, was beamed from the Arecibo Observatory radio telescope towards M13 as an experiment in contacting potential extraterrestrial civilizations in the cluster.
M22 -- Globular Cluster in Sagittarius
FOV: 45 arc-minutes square
Image scale: 2.7 arc-seconds per pixel
Date: 2005/07/28 - 2005/08/03
Exposure: 16 x 1min, ISO400, f/5.6
Filter: None
Camera: Canon 20D (unmodified)
Lens: Nikon 800mm f/5.6 AIS
Mount: Single-arm motorized barndoor tracker, unguided
Processing: Averaged dark frames were subtracted from each of the subexposures, which were then aligned and combined with Registar. Adaptive Lucy-Richardson deconvolution was applied to the combined frame to minimize tracking errors caused by the barndoor tracker. The original image scale was only 1.65 arc-seconds per pixel, and the barndoor had at least 2-3 arc-seconds of periodic and tracking error on all but a couple of the subexposures. Curves and levels adjustments in photoshop were then used to stretch the histogram. All efforts to reduce the noise ended up with a worse-looking image, so what you see here has all the original noise (it was 75-80F while shooting and only 16 exposures were combined, so noise is quite high.)
Remarks: The 16 subexposures were taken on 2005/07/28, 2005/08/02, and 2005/08/03 (many bad ones were thrown out). The barndoor mount can't really handle the 800mm lens, so only about 15% of the subexposures were acceptable. The long 800mm lens can't be pointed very far upwards on the barndoor tracker -- I can only shoot things close to the horizon, so you see M22 here rather than the more famous M13.
This is a shot of the globular cluster Messier 13, in Hercules. Taken over two nights in the backyard for testing prior to GSSP 2014.
Was challenged to fix some problems with camera and mount prior to the star party. The mount part was easy - I re routed some cables so that they didn't snag. The camera part was not easy. During waiting fo rthe skies to clear, I ran the camera to capture a series of dark frames. Unfortunately, during these sequences a piece of flocking paper fell down into the camera body and blocked the movement of the shutter. The shutter electronics a dead and now it will not open. I've had to hot glue the shutter open and now rely on the motion of the mirror plus the electronics of the CCD to time the exposures. Biggest follow up to the shutter issue has been taking flats. Because short duration flats allow over exposure as the mirror flaps up and down, long duration flats are better. I'm now recording flats with a duration of .7 seconds vs 1/60 second. I may consider building a strobe box to further experiment.
This image is a sum of 18 exposures at 1200 seconds each at 100 ISO.
Standard setup: Stellarvue SV4, Pentax K10D (modified and cooled - and broken shutter), SSF6 flattener
Filter: IDAS HEUIB II
Mount: Losmandy G11 with Gemini 2
Guiding scope: Stellarvue SV70ED with Orion SSAG
Guiding: Maxim 5.24
Exposure control: Star Labs DSLR Shutter and Pentax tethering software
Calibrated in Maxim with 10 darks, 21 flats, and 260 bias
Stacked in DSS 3.3.3 beta 51
Processed in PixInsight 1.8 with Crop, DBE, Masked Stretch, Histogram Stretch to reset black point, TGVDenoise, masked curves to boost saturation and reduce muddy sky glow, and unsharp mask on bright stars to tighten.
Passed through LR5 for export to web
Here's the platesolve from PI
Referentiation Matrix (Gnomonic projection = Matrix * Coords[x,y]):
-8.66381e-007 -0.000530417 +0.680789
+0.00053032 -9.15332e-007 -1.0261
+0 +0 +1
Projection origin.. [1937.076485 1280.333772]pix -> [RA:+16 41 52.45 Dec:+36 29 51.55]
Resolution ........ 1.909 arcsec/pix
Rotation .......... 89.898 deg
Focal ............. 653.58 mm
Pixel size ........ 6.05 um
Field of view ..... 2d 3' 16.7" x 1d 21' 29.8"
Image center ...... RA: 16 41 52.423 Dec: +36 29 51.40
Image bounds:
top-left ....... RA: 16 45 13.027 Dec: +35 28 07.62
top-right ...... RA: 16 45 17.404 Dec: +37 31 22.18
bottom-left .... RA: 16 38 32.813 Dec: +35 27 59.29
bottom-right ... RA: 16 38 26.431 Dec: +37 31 13.63
I thought there were a lot of stars until I looked up the globular cluster and I'm missing a few million stars. It appears being in a bortle 7 light polluted area I'm missing out. Oh well, it is what it is.
CCD Atik 314L+
Schmidt-Cassegrain reflector 203 mm with focal reductor F/6.3 (focal : 1280mm)
EQ6 Goto autoguided
LRGB (Astrodon filters)
Luminance (IR cut) : 15x3min (45 min)
RGB : 5x3min (15 min) each layer
Total : 90 min
Processed with Iris
Location : Solemont (France)
Date : 23/08/09 - 20h35 to 22h34 UT
The Great Globular Cluster in Hercules (M13) is arguably the most spectacular globular cluster in the northern skies and under dark conditions it can even be seen with the unaided eye. Also shown near to the upper right corner of this image is the small (3.3 x 1.7 arc minute) spiral galaxy NGC 6207. An even smaller and fainter galaxy (IC 4617, see image notes) is visible about midway between NGC 6207 and the center of M13.
Photographed on the morning of May 14, 2013 from my light-polluted driveway using a 5 inch aperture, f/5.2 telescope and a Sony NEX-5N digital camera (ISO 800, a stack of seventy-three images each exposed for two minutes, producing a total exposure integration time of two hours and twenty-six minutes). A broadband light-pollution filter was used to reduce the sky brightness which resulted in an approximate two-thirds stop loss in exposure. Guiding for each of the two minute long exposures was performed on a Celestron CGEM mount using a Lodestar autoguider and a Stellarvue SV50A guidescope with the PHD Guiding software.
Image registration, integration, and adjustments done with PixInsight v01.08.00.1015 RC7 Ripley with final tweaks in Photoshop CS5.
This photo is best seen in the Flickr light box or at full size (1280 x 1280).
All rights reserved.
Astronomers have used NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to peer into the center of a dense swarm of stars called Omega Centauri. Located some 17,000 light-years from Earth, Omega Centauri is a massive globular star cluster, containing several million stars swirling in locked orbits around a common center of gravity. The stars are packed so densely in the cluster's core that it is difficult for ground-based telescopes to make out individual stars. Hubble's high resolution is able to pick up where ground-based telescopes leave off, capturing distinct points of light from stars at the very center of the cluster.
Omega Centauri is so large in our sky that only a small part of it fit within the field of view of Hubble's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 instrument, which captured this image. Yet even this tiny patch contains some 50,000 stars, all packed into a region only about 13 light-years wide. For comparison, a similarly sized region centered on the Sun would contain about a half dozen stars.
The vast majority of stars in this Hubble image are faint, yellow-white dwarf stars similar to our Sun. The handful of bright yellow-orange stars are expanding, dying red giants. A number of faint blue stars are also visible in the image. These are in a brief phase of evolution between the dwarf stage and the red-giant stage, during which the surface temperature is high. The stars in Omega Centauri are very old, about 12 billion years.
The stars in the core of Omega Centauri are so densely packed that occasionally one of them will actually collide with another one. Even in the dense center of Omega Centauri, stellar collisions will be infrequent. But the cluster is so old that many thousands of collisions have occurred.
This image's stair-step shape results from the design of the instrument that captured it. The Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2, removed from Hubble in 2009, consisted of four cameras, each of which took a picture of a section of the target. One of instrument's cameras took a magnified view of the section it was observing, to allow study of that section in finer detail. When the images were processed, that magnified section was shrunk down to the same size as the other sections, so that it fit into the image. This creates the odd shape of its images.
For more information, visit: hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/2001/news-2001-33.html
Credit: NASA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA);
Acknowledgment: A. Cool (SFSU)
Newton 385mm F/3 + QHY268C + EQ-8
11x120sec + 12x180sec
Small 3.76um pixel of QHY268C works great with good optics!
High sensitivity helps a lot too!
M3 (also NGC5272) is one of the most spectacular globular star clusters of our own Milky Way...Containing about a half-million stars in a cotton-ball shape roughly 750 light years in diameter, M3 orbits the Milky Way's center halo high above the galactic plane. At a dark sky location, it is visible to the naked eye.
Like most globulars, it is very old and as you can see, contains a large amount of old red stars. Also clearly visible though, and unlike many globular clusters, M3 has an unusually large number of blue stars. These blue stars, called "Blue Stragglers" are now believed to have formed when their outer and cooler layers were stripped away by gravitational interactions when they pass through the star dense middle region of the cluster.
Here is a very high resolution of the same image: flic.kr/p/2nmy3pf
Edited Hubble Space Telescope image (with annotation by NASA) of the galaxy Bedin I (a dwarf galaxy highlighted by dashed lines) seen behind a much closer globular cluster.
Original caption: The universe is very cluttered. Myriad island cities of stars, the galaxies, form a backdrop tapestry. Much closer to home are nebulae, star clusters, and assorted other foreground celestial objects that are mostly within our Milky Way galaxy. Despite the vastness of space, objects tend to get in front of each other.This happened when astronomers used the Hubble Space Telescope to photograph the globular star cluster NGC 6752 (located 13,000 light-years away in our Milky Way's halo). In a celestial game of "Where's Waldo?", Hubble's sharp vision uncovered a never-before-seen dwarf galaxy located far behind the cluster's crowded stellar population. The loner galaxy is in our own cosmic backyard, only 30 million light-years away (approximately 2,300 times farther than the foreground cluster).The object is classified as a dwarf spheroidal galaxy because it measures only around 3,000 light-years at its greatest extent (barely 1/30th the diameter of the Milky Way), and it is roughly a thousand times dimmer than the Milky Way.Because of its 13-billion-year-old age, and its isolation - which resulted in hardly any interaction with other galaxies - the dwarf is the astronomical equivalent of a living fossil from the early universe.
Edited Hubble Space Telescope image (with annotation by NASA) of the galaxy Bedin I (a dwarf galaxy highlighted by dashed lines) seen behind a much closer globular cluster. Color/processing variant.
Original caption: The universe is very cluttered. Myriad island cities of stars, the galaxies, form a backdrop tapestry. Much closer to home are nebulae, star clusters, and assorted other foreground celestial objects that are mostly within our Milky Way galaxy. Despite the vastness of space, objects tend to get in front of each other.This happened when astronomers used the Hubble Space Telescope to photograph the globular star cluster NGC 6752 (located 13,000 light-years away in our Milky Way's halo). In a celestial game of "Where's Waldo?", Hubble's sharp vision uncovered a never-before-seen dwarf galaxy located far behind the cluster's crowded stellar population. The loner galaxy is in our own cosmic backyard, only 30 million light-years away (approximately 2,300 times farther than the foreground cluster).The object is classified as a dwarf spheroidal galaxy because it measures only around 3,000 light-years at its greatest extent (barely 1/30th the diameter of the Milky Way), and it is roughly a thousand times dimmer than the Milky Way.Because of its 13-billion-year-old age, and its isolation - which resulted in hardly any interaction with other galaxies - the dwarf is the astronomical equivalent of a living fossil from the early universe.
The Sculptor Galaxy (NCG-253) and the neighboring globular cluster NGC 288 were photographed in this composite. The image was made of 50 twenty second exposures (Canon T2i / 100 mm f/2 lens @ f/3.2 / ISO 800.) Tracking was done with an iOptron Sky Tracker. Stacking was done using Nebulosity.
This came out way better than I was expecting. M5 is a globular cluster that contains over 100,000 stars. It's also more than 24,000 light years away. THAT IS CRAZY.
This is a globular cluster, a collection of a bout a million stars all held together by their own gravity. It's from Hubble, and is a combination of two images: one visible light, one near-infrared.
Cet amas est situé dans la constellation du Sagitaire.
Lunette Orion 110mm ed f/7 + Filtre Idas Lps
Canon Xs (1000D) à 800iso
Monture HEQ-5 Pro + Celestron NextGuide
Expo: 13 x 4min. Total: 52 min.
St-Agapit (Québec), 24 juillet 2011.
A rich, starry sky fills the view from an ancient, gas giant planet in the core of the globular star cluster M4, as imagined in this artist's concept. The 13-billion-year-old planet, whose mass was measured by Hubble to be 2.5 times the mass of Jupiter, orbits a helium white-dwarf star and the millisecond pulsar B1620-26, seen at lower left. The globular cluster is deficient in heavier elements for making planets, so the existence of such a world implies that planet formation may have been quite efficient and common in the early universe.
For more information, visit: hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/2003/news-2003-19.html
Credit: NASA and G. Bacon (STScI)
Omega Centauri (NGC5139) is the largest known globular star cluster in the Milky Way. Taken on Dec 20, 2022 at 5:14am facing SE from Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico. Also seen is a secretive Chinese satellite SJ 16-02 and an Aerostat that is used to monitor marine and air traffic in the Caribbean for the US Customs and Border Protection Agency.
This was the best 16 images of 50 taken. Each exposure was 30 seconds. Much more interesting in All Sizes
On a personal note, I've been trying for a long time to get an image of this worth showing. I'm pleased to be able to share this one.
Edited Hubble Space Telescope image of distorted globular cluster Messier 62. Color/processing variant.
Original caption: Most globular clusters are almost perfectly spherical collections of stars — but Messier 62 breaks the mould. The 12-billion-year-old cluster is distorted, and stretches out on one side to form a comet-like shape with a bright head and extended tail. As one of the closest globular clusters to the centre of our galaxy, Messier 62 is likely affected by strong tidal forces that displace many of its stars, resulting in this unusual shape. When globular clusters form, they tend to be somewhat denser towards the centre. The more massive the cluster, the denser the centre is likely to be. With a mass with almost a million times that of the Sun, Messier 62 is one of the densest of them all. With so many stars at the centre, interactions and mergers occur regularly. Huge stars form and run out of fuel quickly, exploding violently and their remains collapse to form white dwarfs, neutron stars and even black holes! For many years, it was believed that any black holes that form in a globular cluster would quickly be kicked out due to the violent interactions taking place there. However, in 2013, a black hole was discovered in Messier 62 — the first ever to be found in a Milky Way globular cluster, giving astronomers a whole new hunting ground for these mysterious objects. This view comprises ultraviolet and visible light gathered by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys.
Hubble Space Telescope image of the gorgeous globular cluster M5. See here for more: blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/05/02/sparkly/
Original: www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1118a/
Globular Cluster M 22 in the constellation Sagittarius, near the galactic center. It is some 10,000 light years away from earth and one of the brightest and largest Globular Clusters in the sky.
Object: M 22
Optics: Lacerta Newton 12" F4 + 3" Wynne-Corrector
Mount: Sky-Watcher EQ8
Camera: ZWO ASI 183MM Pro @-20°C, Gain=53, Offset=10
Filter: ZWO EFW 7x36mm, ZWO 36mm Filters
Exposure: total ~0.5h, R 21x30sec, G 21x30sec, B 22x30sec, L (derived from RGB), 200 Bias, 40 Darks, 40 Flats per channel
Date: 2018-07-12, 2018-07-13
Location: ATHOS Centro Astronómico S.L., La Palma
Capture: Sequence Generator Pro
Guiding: Off-Axis, ASI120MM, PHD2
Image Acquisition: Stephan Schurig
Image Processing: Stephan Schurig
AstroPixelProcessor 1.062: Calibration, Registration, Normalization, Integration, Channel Combination, Background Calibration, Star Colors Correction, Auto Digital Development
Photoshop 19.1.5: Curves, Exposure (Offset), Masked Nik Dfine 2 Denoise, Masked Dynamic (Dynamic, Saturation), Star Shrink, Curves, HighPass Sharpening
M13 is a globular cluster of several hundred thousand stars in the constellation of Hercules. Located 25,000 light years from earth. It can be seen with binoculars most easily in July. I tiny galaxy (IC4617) can be seen in the lower left corner. IC4617 is 503 million light years from earth.
Equipment: Image captured with 8" Celestron EdgeHD telescope and ZWOASI071MC Pro colour camera.
Exposures: 19*10 second, 6*30 second, 6*60 second, 5*90 second, 7*120 second, 6*180 second.
Processed with PixInsight and Photoshop
I can't claim this is one of Hubble's best images but I have grown fond of it for multiple reasons. Astronomers are interested in the many bright globular clusters dotting the central region of the galaxy. The morphology of the galaxy is also interesting to study because there is a lot of evidence that its unusual appearance is due to a recent merger. There are possibly two galactic nuclei in the center. Call it another piece of a cosmological puzzle.
Some important notes about the processing: The left side includes a set of data that was less deep than the right side so you might notice the right side is a bit smoother and cleaner. Even more important, there is a hole up and to the left of the nucleus where data is completely missing. I filled it in with a gradient painting so that it wouldn't be distracting but hopefully it is just obvious enough so that you realize that is not actually data. If you look closely you can see diffraction spikes pointing toward a bright star hidden in the blank spot.
Red: hst_05212_01_wfpc2_f702w_wf_sci + hst_06861_01_wfpc2_f702w_wf_sci
Green: Pseudo
Blue: hst_05212_01_wfpc2_f555w_wf_sci + hst_06861_01_wfpc2_f450w_wf_sci
North is up.
Another low elevation Messier object as see from the UK.
5 x 2-min RGB subs.
T: APM 107
C: QSI 683
M: EQ8
Cambridge, UK
125 light 30sec iso 800
33 dark frame 30sec iso 800
31 bias frame 1/8000sec
31 flat frame 1/80 sec iso 800
Reflex no modded on eq5 synscan without guide and telescope refractor TSED70Q 474mm 70mm F6.7.
Processed with DeepSkyStacker 3.3.2, Photoshop CS6, Lightroom 5.3.
1st try with my coma corrector and its done an amazing job! no more coma :D
i did want to get about 4 hours worth of data on this last night but only managed about 1hr 20mins as my house got in the way :(
also 1st time using flats
SW 130-pds with 0.9x Coma Corrector and Baader Neodymium filter
HEQ5
Canon 7D
40x 120sec light subs
50x darks
50x flats
50x bias
A quick globular for tonight. This is, as the name implies, Terzan's first globular cluster out of eleven total.
Some noteworthy facts about the cluster are available for perusal in this paper: cdsads.u-strasbg.fr/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?bibcode=1999A%2...
Red: hst_05436_03_wfpc2_f814w_wf_sci
Green: Pseudo
Blue: hst_05436_03_wfpc2_f555w_wf_sci
North is NOT up. It is 44.3° counter-clockwise from up.
This Hubble image shows a small part of the dwarf galaxy Caldwell 17 (NGC 147). Near the center of the image is a globular star cluster located in the galaxy. It was imaged by Hubble’s Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) in visible and infrared light.
Credit: NASA, ESA, and J. Trauger (Jet Propulsion Laboratory); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)
For Hubble's Caldwell catalog website and information on how to find these objects in the night sky, visit:
Edited Hubble Space Telescope image of distorted globular cluster Messier 62.
Original caption: Most globular clusters are almost perfectly spherical collections of stars — but Messier 62 breaks the mould. The 12-billion-year-old cluster is distorted, and stretches out on one side to form a comet-like shape with a bright head and extended tail. As one of the closest globular clusters to the centre of our galaxy, Messier 62 is likely affected by strong tidal forces that displace many of its stars, resulting in this unusual shape. When globular clusters form, they tend to be somewhat denser towards the centre. The more massive the cluster, the denser the centre is likely to be. With a mass with almost a million times that of the Sun, Messier 62 is one of the densest of them all. With so many stars at the centre, interactions and mergers occur regularly. Huge stars form and run out of fuel quickly, exploding violently and their remains collapse to form white dwarfs, neutron stars and even black holes! For many years, it was believed that any black holes that form in a globular cluster would quickly be kicked out due to the violent interactions taking place there. However, in 2013, a black hole was discovered in Messier 62 — the first ever to be found in a Milky Way globular cluster, giving astronomers a whole new hunting ground for these mysterious objects. This view comprises ultraviolet and visible light gathered by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys.
Edited Hubble Space Telescope image of the core of the globular cluster Omega Centauri. Color/processing variant.
Original caption: The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope snapped this panoramic view of a colourful assortment of 100 000 stars residing in the crowded core of a giant star cluster. The image reveals a small region inside the massive globular cluster Omega Centauri, which boasts nearly 10 million stars. Globular clusters, ancient swarms of stars united by gravity, are almost as old as our Milky Way galaxy. The stars in Omega Centauri are between 10 billion and 12 billion years old. The cluster lies about 16 000 light-years from Earth. This is one of the first images taken by the new Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), installed aboard Hubble in May 2009, during Servicing Mission 4. The camera can snap sharp images over a broad range of wavelengths. The photograph showcases the camera's colour versatility by revealing a variety of stars in key stages of their life cycles. The majority of the stars in the image are yellow-white, like our Sun. These are adult stars that are shining by hydrogen fusion. Towards the ends of their normal lives, the stars become cooler and larger. These late-life stars are the orange dots in the image. Even later in their life cycles, the stars continue to cool down and expand in size, becoming red giants. These bright red stars swell to many times larger than our Sun's size and begin to shed their gaseous envelopes. After ejecting most of their mass and exhausting much of their hydrogen fuel, the stars appear brilliant blue. Only a thin layer of material covers their super-hot cores. These stars are desperately trying to extend their lives by fusing helium in their cores. At this stage, they emit much of their light at ultraviolet wavelengths. When the helium runs out, the stars reach the end of their lives. Only their burnt-out cores remain, and they are called white dwarfs (the faint blue dots in the image). White dwarfs are no longer generating energy through nuclear fusion and have gravitationally contracted to the size of Earth. They will continue to cool and grow dimmer for many billions of years until they become dark cinders. Other stars that appear in the image are known as "blue stragglers". They are older stars that acquire a new lease of life when they collide and merge with other stars. The encounters boost the stars' energy-production rate, making them appear bluer. All of the stars in the image are cosy neighbours. The average distance between any two stars in the cluster's crowded core is only about a third of a light-year, roughly 13 times closer than our Sun's nearest stellar neighbour, Proxima Centauri. Although the stars are close together, WFC3's sharpness can resolve each of them as individual stars. If anyone lived in this globular cluster, they would behold a star-saturated sky that is roughly 100 times brighter than Earth's sky. Globular clusters were thought to be assemblages of stars that share the same birth date. Evidence suggests, however, that Omega Centauri has at least two populations of stars with different ages. Some astronomers think that the cluster may be the remnant of a small galaxy that was gravitationally disrupted long ago by the Milky Way, losing stars and gas. Omega Centauri is among the biggest and most massive of some 200 globular clusters orbiting the Milky Way. It is one of the few globular clusters that can be seen with the unaided eye. Named by Johann Bayer in 1603 as the 24th brightest object in the constellation of Centaurus, it resembles a small cloud in the southern sky and might easily be mistaken for a comet. Hubble observed Omega Centauri on 15 July 2009, in ultraviolet and visible light. These Hubble observations of Omega Centauri are part of the Hubble Servicing Mission 4 Early Release Observations.
Edinburgh, Canon EOS 600Dα with light pollution filter, Ikharos ED refractor D = 80 mm f/7, 2 exposures of 1 min each at 1600 ISO, tracking only. Taken 21:44 to 21:46 UT. Bayer interpolated; logarithmic stretch.
North Sagittarius region and a boat load of Messier objects. Composite of 5 images each 90 seconds at ISO 800, f/5.6 and a 75mm lens. These were taken with a iOptron Skytracker.
There is an updated shot of these objects at:
Globular clusters M53 (NGC 5024, at the upper right) and NGC 5053 - shot 2013 May 11 from the Santa Monica Mountains with Edge HD 9.25" at f/2.3 with Hyperstar and Atik 314L+ color CCD; composite of 2 frames, stack of 13 frames for M53, stack of 12 frames for NGC 5053, all 65s exposures; originally processed in Nebulosity; mosaic composed in Microsoft ICE; final processing in PS CS5
To view the animation, right-click and view the original size (or click that link) image. It's a 5.59 MB file so if you have a meager connection it will take a while. Sorry I couldn't stream it but it is a short loop and Flickr wouldn't let me loop a streaming video format.
M3 is a star cluster and RR Lyrae stars are variable stars which vary in brightness over relatively short periods of time. Hopefully they aren't too subtle to see dimming and brightening.
I was hoping to create something very similar to the image featured in this APOD with this video.
This is a series of images taken over a period of about 12 hours* of the core of M3 by Hubble. The video itself is grayscale F555W data. The coloration of the stars is NOT animated. It's just a color overlay. I think it's possible to generate a totally animated RGB video but I think it would take a very long time and make little difference. It should still be a fairly accurate representation.
*Looking at the proposal, Bailyn requested a 24 hour look at this cluster but apparently only got 12. Too bad! :(
Video animation: F555W data
Red: hst_06805_03_wfpc2_f814w_pc_sci
Green: hst_06805_03_wfpc2_f555w_pc_sci
Blue: hst_06805_03_wfpc2_f336w_pc_sci
North is NOT up. It's 15° clockwise from up.
This colourful view of the globular cluster NGC 6362 was captured by the Wide Field Imager attached to the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile. This brilliant ball of ancient stars lies in the southern constellation of Ara (The Altar).
More information:
www.eso.org/public/images/eso1243a/
Credit:
ESO
I have never seen these targets imaged in the same frame so I thought I would give it a crack. Centaurus Alpha is visible to the bottom left and the galaxy NGC 4945 at the top of frame above Omega Centauri. I am a little amazed that some detail as well as colour came out of the galaxies at only 180mm, the image is uncropped with some distortion visible at the edge of frame but this lens despite its age works well!
Acquisition details:
20 x 1 minute subs @ ISO 1600
Unmodified Canon 6D, Nikon 180mm f2.8 @ f4
Astrotrac TT320X-AG
No calibration frames, stacked and edited in CC
On the left is M13 and on the right is Omega Centauri. I shot these both with the same equipment and cropped them to the same size. You can see how much larger Omega Centauri is in the sky. Sadly we only get to see it for a short time each year in the northern hemisphere and it is very low in the southern sky for us during that time. This makes it more difficult to photograph as we have to shoot through a lot of atmosphere when it is so low.
Globular clusters galore dot around this brightest cluster galaxy. You might guess that they are background galaxies and it's easy to mistake them for that or even a dim foreground star but a good portion of the fuzzy little dots here are globular clusters. If it's perfectly round, rather bright (but not one of the two big spiky foreground stars), and rather compact, it's very likely you are looking at a globular cluster.
If you look very closely, you can also see a dusty disk surrounding the very bright nucleus, as well.
Red: HST_9427_09_ACS_WFC_F814W_sci
Green: Pseudo
Blue: HST_9427_09_ACS_WFC_F435W_sci
Additionally, these data were used to fill in some of the chip gap, but not all. The rest of the chip gap was filled with the same data cloning method previously described here.
hst_05454_0c_wfpc2_f814w_wf_sci
hst_05454_0c_wfpc2_f555w_wf_sci
North is NOT up. It is 3.6° counter-clockwise from up.
This image shows stars in the dwarf galaxy Caldwell 18 (NGC 185). A globular star cluster in the galaxy appears in the upper right. The image includes observations taken in visible and infrared light with Hubble's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2).
Credit: NASA, ESA, and D. Geisler (Universidad de Concepcion); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)
For Hubble's Caldwell catalog website and information on how to find these objects in the night sky, visit:
15x 30s subs ISO1600 stacked in DeepSkyStacker (10 Darks, 20 Flats, 20 Bias) processed in PixInsight and Photoshop. Canon EOS 450D DSLR prime focus Sky-Watcher 150P Newtonian EQ3-2 mount. Baader Neodymium filter, Sky-Watcher coma corrector.
M54, the nucleus of the dwarf galaxy SagDEG
Credit: Giuseppe Donatiello
RA/DEC: 18 55 03.330 -30 28 47.50
Some time ago, we showed you the density map of the galactic bulge obtained with Gaia data [ flic.kr/p/HQkH3Y ]. In that image we had delimited Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy (SagDEG) with an ellipse, highlighting how the globular cluster M54 occupied its exact center.
SagDEG is apparently enormous in the sky and occupies much of the eastern area of the constellation of Sagittarius, but it is in fact invisible. In fact, it was discovered just 30 years ago by Rodrigo Ibata, Gerry Gilmore and Mike Irwin due to the overdensity of old Population II stars [Nature 370, 194–196 (1994)].
About 10 thousand light years wide, it is estimated at about 70 thousand (21 kpc) and is still being captured by the Milky Way which is literally dismembering and sucking it. In fact, we find the majority of its stars in the so-called Sagittarius Stream which forms a double ring almost orthogonal to the disk of our Galaxy.
Four globular clusters are attributed to SagDEG, however M54 is particularly rich and compact. Occupying its geometric center, it is plausible that it represents its nucleus. In other words, observing M54 we are observing one of the approximately 70 satellites of the Milky Way.
In this image (crop), obtained over two nights (6-7 August 2024), the entire field - please enlarge - is filled with faint stars with magnitudes certainly comparable to those of M54: they are all stars belonging to SagDEG.
Once again we are faced with objects which defy categorization. These look something like globular clusters but they're not as compact. They're kind of like dwarf galaxies, but not quite that, either. No one has found any of these extended clusters anywhere in the Milky Way, so it is thought that because only Andromeda has them that they represent clues to the differing histories of Milky Way and Andromeda.
Anyway, if you are feeling inquisitive, all of this information can be found in this paper which goes into plenty of detail about what they are and where they may have come from.
Using Stellarium, I made a picture showing where the four clusters are located. I knew they were in the outer halo of Andromeda but EC4 is surprisingly far away to me.
These data all came from this proposal:
Deep imaging of newly discovered globular clusters in the outer halo of M31
Red: ACS/WFC F814W
Green: Pseudo
Blue: ACS/WFC F606W
North is 65° clockwise for all four clusters.
This is M71, a globular cluster in Sagitta. Taken with a 6 inch reflector and a modded canon 450D. 4x30s exposures from Nuneaton, Warwickshire.
For more info about M71 check this wikipedia link
This cluster of stars is known as Messier 15, and is located some 35,000 light-years away in the constellation of Pegasus (The Winged Horse). It is one of the oldest globular clusters known, with an age of around 12 billion years.
Both very hot blue stars and cooler golden stars can be seen swarming together in the image, becoming more concentrated towards the cluster's bright centre. Messier 15 is one of the densest globular clusters known, with most of its mass concentrated at its core.
As well as stars, Messier 15 was the first cluster known to host a planetary nebula, and it has been found to have a rare type of black hole at its centre.
Credit: NASA, ESA
For more information, visit: science.nasa.gov/mission/hubble/science/explore-the-night...