Windy night, but very transparent skies. All the sides of the observatory were on to keep the wind off the scope! This object forms a nice picture with the two bright stars (mag 7.21 and 7.97). A little too dim for an RGB layer, plus the fact it was getting a bit to close to the meridian. I've not been able to find many other webcam images of this object, but here is a very serious picture of it!
This globular cluster is one of the most remote globulars of our Milky Way galaxy, both from our solar system and from the galactic center, at nearly 300,000 light years from each. It is thus nearly double as far out as the Large Magellanic Cloud. As it is intrinsically luminous (with Mag -9.48 according to Harris' database, it ranks on place four after Omega Centauri, southern NGC 6388 in Scorpius, and M54 in absolute brightness), it is however in the range of medium-sized amateur telescopes, and the most remote Milky Way object visible in moderately-sized scopes. From the galactic center, it is lying "beyond us", so that we see it in the scarcely populated hemisphere of the galactic anticenter (as one of the 13 globulars there). (source seds.org)
Stacked in registax 3 with dark and flat. TIFF exported to photoshop and processed with curves. Star bloat reduced with a less stretched copy over the top. Final star saturation controlled with minimum filter. Also exported to IRIS as FITS and deconvolution applied. The deconvolved core of the cluster was applied in photoshop as a feathered L layer over centre of the cluster to increase star detail.
Considering how far away this object is, I was suprised to resolve so many stars. The additional diffraction spikes are probably caused by the focuser intruding into the light path - I had changed the way I was attaching my camera... I think I will change it back! Also, something is not quite right with the flat field. :-/ Tracking was pretty good, but a slight stretch is visible in the RA direction.
Exposure Details :
IR Block 150x10s on 200mm @ F5 with SC3.5
Curdridge Observatory, Southampton,UK