First glimpse of M13! Wow.

[SacRiker]

4 hours ago, PHIL53 said:

I have made myself a mental cross-roads to find M92, using naked eye stars, with a line from Eta (44Her) to Iota (85Her) and another going from Pi (67Her) to the Dragon's Head Rastaban (Beta Draconis): using the 26mm wide angle eyepiece or similar, you can't miss it ! See attached map.

Thanks! I'll try this in my next session. Last night I was able to get my first good views of Saturn. Really special.

[Paz]

M13 is one of those gifts that keeps on giving. More apeture, better seeing, and more time on it all result in more details. I first saw it as only a faint small patch using low power binoculars. It wasn't spectacular to look at but I was stoked just to have found it. I recently revisited M13 with much more aperture and the difference in what you can see is ridiculous - no fuzziness or faint patch business - it's a large angry ball of stars!

[SacRiker]

5 hours ago, Paz said:

M13 is one of those gifts that keeps on giving. More apeture, better seeing, and more time on it all result in more details. I first saw it as only a faint small patch using low power binoculars. It wasn't spectacular to look at but I was stoked just to have found it. I recently revisited M13 with much more aperture and the difference in what you can see is ridiculous - no fuzziness or faint patch business - it's a large angry ball of stars!

What kind of scope did you use?

[Paz]

That was a 350mm reflector compared to a pair of 70mm zoom binoculars (exactly the kind of binoculars everyone would tell you to never buy - and they are right about that!), but as as well as a slight(!) increase in aperture it was after the street lights go out where I live and M13 was almost literally straight up at the time so there was a minimum of atmosphere in the way - with straight through binoculars I don't go for targets that high up.

[SacRiker]

Just now, Paz said:

That was a 350mm reflector compared to a pair of 70mm zoom binoculars (exactly the kind of binoculars everyone would tell you to never buy - and they are right about that!), but as as well as a slight(!) increase in aperture it was after the street lights go out where I live and M13 was almost literally straight up at the time so there was a minimum of atmosphere in the way - with straight through binoculars I don't go for targets that high up.

Slight upgrade!

[Branden]

I remember my first sighting of the Great Cluster. Just last year and was my first Glob to boot! Absolutely loved it! Atmospherics weren't all that great as I recall. Quite a bit of humidity in the air so all the brighter celestials had a halo, waxing gibbous moon lighting everything up, my primary mirror had a decent layer of dew on it, but you could still see M13 plain as if it were in my backyard! And as you said it did look three-dimensional. You could definitely tell it was spherical. Spectacular sight and still one of my absolute favorites to this day

[Paul73]

Good tip Phil! 

M53 is a really easy one to find. It may be getting a bit low in the sky now.

Paul

[SacRiker]

11 hours ago, Branden said:

I remember my first sighting of the Great Cluster. Just last year and was my first Glob to boot! Absolutely loved it! Atmospherics weren't all that great as I recall. Quite a bit of humidity in the air so all the brighter celestials had a halo, waxing gibbous moon lighting everything up, my primary mirror had a decent layer of dew on it, but you could still see M13 plain as if it were in my backyard! And as you said it did look three-dimensional. You could definitely tell it was spherical. Spectacular sight and still one of my absolute favorites to this day

Really love this sketch and the added info.

[Mark S W]

M 13 is always a favorite of mine as well as the neighbor M 92

Now that you found it M 13 will draw you back time after time

Mark