Messier 13, the Great Globular Cluster in Hercules: an image – 24 Apr. 2025
We are proud to share with you this stunning image of the iconic Messier 13 globular cluster, unveling its shocking beauty.
Messier 13 (aka NGC 6205): 24 Apr. 2025.
The image above comes from the average of 20, 300-second exposures, remotely taken with the ARTEC250+Paramount ME+C3Pro61000EC robotic unit available as part of the Virtual Telescope Project facility in Manciano, Italy, under the darkest skies of the Italian peninsula.
Messier 13 (also known as NGC 6205) is one of the most fascinating deep-sky objects in the northern hemisphere. This cosmic marvel is revealed here in its full glory: a compact collection of hundreds of thousands of stars, bound together by gravity and as ancient as our Galaxy itself.
M13 lies about 25,000 light-years from us, in the constellation Hercules, and is located in the halo of our Galaxy, far outside its disk (where the Sun resides). It was discovered in 1714 by Edmond Halley, the same astronomer remembered for the famous comet bearing his name. The cluster is estimated to be about 12 billion years old, so it is a true cosmic relic, a fossil of our Milky Way. Its stars are among the oldest known, with chemical compositions poor in heavy elements, traces of a time when the universe was still very young.
With a diameter of about 150 light-years, it appears as a dense sphere of stars. Its central density is so high that, if we lived in that region, the night sky (supposed a night would exist) would be lit by thousands of stars visible to the naked eye.
Many galaxies are all around, much more distant than M13: in particular, the spiral galaxy NGC 6207 is visible at hour 7, placed at about 50 million of light-years from us.
Looking at this image, made possible also thanks to the sky over Manciano (GR), one of the least light-polluted in Italy, we can sense not only the aesthetic wonder of the universe, but also imagine how each star in M13 stands as a silent witness to the evolution of our Galaxy, embedded in space.
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