M13 Hercules Great Cluster

Curdridge Observatory, Southampton,UK
Object name: M13 Hercules Great Cluster
Apparent RA: 16 41 41.5 Apparent Dec:+36 27 39
Constellation: Hercules
14 Apr 2014

The good spell of weather under the full Moon continues. Not much imaging is possible so I'm concentrating on the bright springtime globular clusters.

And here is te biggest and best of the lot: M14 The Great Cluster in Hercules. This pokes over the tree line at the Curdridge observatory around 11pm and I can imaging it happily until dawn starts to interfer at about 4am.

Of course, I don't stay up all that time - I leave the scope to it and get some sleep. This is about 65x180s exposures with the unbinned Atik 490EX CCD camera on the Skywatcher 200 Newtonian.

View full sized image of M13 Hercules Great Cluster

This image was autoguided using my homemade off axis guider with Lodestar.

Imaged with my homemade telescope mount

Exposure Details :

Coma Corrector Baader L 65x180s on 200 @ F5 f.l. 1000 with Atik 490 camera

Equipment:

Skywatcher 200 Newt (upgraded with OO Hilux secondary)
Baader Focuser
Homemade focus motor
Homemade filterwheel / OAG combo with Lodestar guide camera
Artemis 285 CCD camera
Homemade Telescope mount

Curdridge Observatory, Southampton,UK