Photo of the Week for July 17, 2015
One of the summer sky’s undisputed hits is M13 in Hercules. Most would agree it’s the northern sky’s finest globular star cluster. Under dark skies it’s visible to the unaided eye and is a wonderful sight in any telescope. But like all gobulars, M13 really comes into its own in larger scopes that are able to resolve the cluster’s myriad faint stars.
This excellent view of M13 was captured by Daniel Posey at the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada Victoria Centre’s observatory, located on the grounds of the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory on Little Saanich Mountain. He used a QSI 583c CCD camera attached to the facility’s 14-inch Meade Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope to acquire the 13, 2-minute exposures used for this image.