The Great Globular Star Cluster Messier 13 in Hercules: Wide-field view
APoD(09-26-24).jpg)
In 1716, English astronomer Edmond Halley noted, "This is but a little Patch, but it shows itself to the naked Eye, when the Sky is serene and the Moon absent." Of course, M13 is now less modestly recognized as the Great Globular Cluster in Hercules—one of the brightest globular star clusters in the northern sky.
Sharp telescopic views like this one reveal the spectacular cluster's hundreds of thousands of stars. At a distance of 25,000 light-years, the cluster stars crowd into a region 150 light-years in diameter. Approaching the cluster core, upwards of 100 stars could be contained in a cube just 3 light-years on a side. For comparison, the closest star to the Sun is over 4 light-years away. The deep, wide-field image also reveals distant background galaxies including NGC 6207 at the upper left, and faint, foreground Milky Way dust clouds known to some as integrated flux nebulae.
In 1974, the former United States Arecibo Observatory, a radio telescope in Puerto Rico, sent a message containing encoded information about humans, DNA, atomic numbers, Earth's position and other information, towards Messier 13 as an experiment in contacting potential extraterrestrial civilizations in the cluster. M13 was chosen because it was a large, relatively close star cluster that was available at the time. The cluster will move through space during the transit time; views differ on whether the cluster will be in a position to receive the message by the time that it arrives in ~25,000 years. Arecibo was the world's largest radio telescope for over half a century— from its construction in 1963 until 2016. Today, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) in Australia holds that record.
Release Date: Sept. 26, 2024
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