M13 - The Great Globular Cluster in Hercules

I tried resolving the double star of Polaris last night and frankly it looked like the same single star no matter how many different ways I looked at it so I gave up for now and tried something altogether bigger - the Great Globular Cluster in Hercules. This was rapidly sinking to the west behind the house but I aimed my telescope about a third of the way down from the top right corner of the square that makes up the centre of the Hercules constellation and spotted a small smudge of light. This square is also known as the Keystone. Unfortunately I lost line of sight behind the house at that point before I got a good look at it.

How to find M13

Image taken from Stellarium

I went out a bit earlier tonight to catch it higher in the sky and found it again pretty quickly. It had taken me a few minutes to get my telescope pointing the right way, which was not easy given that the target was right above me and I have an equatorial mount. What I saw was the small smudge of light I found last night. It was brighter in the middle and less so on the outside. The skies weren't very dark so I couldn't see much more than this, and I certainly couldn't see it with the naked eye, but it was good to view my first deep-sky object. Higher magnification eyepieces just made the smudge darker and despite spending some time looking at it I couldn't resolve any more detail.

The Great Globular Cluster in Hercules
Image courtesy of NASA

The Great Globular Cluster in Hercules, discovered by Edmond Halley in 1714, is home to approximately 1 million stars. It spans 450 light years which means it's pretty big! It lies about 25,000 light years away from Earth. It is said to be one of the older bodies in space, possibly over 12 billion years old.