0 reactions
M13 - The Great Globular Cluster in Hercules. A cosmic fossil and the target of the Arecibo Message, shot from a balcony in central Warsaw.
Behold M13 – one of the brightest and most beautiful globular clusters in the northern sky.
Globular clusters are true cosmic fossils. It is estimated that the stars forming this luminous swarm are over 11 billion years old! This means they formed when our Universe was still very young (for comparison, our Sun is only 4.6 billion years old).
We actually sent a message there hoping to contact an alien civilization. This dense swarm of over 300,000 stars is located 25,000 light-years from Earth. It was precisely towards this giant concentration of suns that the famous radio message, designed by Carl Sagan and Frank Drake, was beamed in 1974 from the massive Arecibo radio telescope. It contained, among other things, a diagram of DNA, a human figure, and the layout of our Solar System.
There is just one catch – by the time our signal covers this unimaginable distance of 25,000 light-years, the M13 cluster itself will have moved to a completely different location in space!
Equipment & Acquisition:
\- Telescope: William Optics Zenithstar 73
\- Camera: ZWO ASI 2600 MC Pro
\- Location: Balcony in the very center of Warsaw, Poland (Heavy light pollution / Bortle 9)
\- Integration time: 8 hours
#space
source
Behold M13 – one of the brightest and most beautiful globular clusters in the northern sky.
Globular clusters are true cosmic fossils. It is estimated that the stars forming this luminous swarm are over 11 billion years old! This means they formed when our Universe was still very young (for comparison, our Sun is only 4.6 billion years old).
We actually sent a message there hoping to contact an alien civilization. This dense swarm of over 300,000 stars is located 25,000 light-years from Earth. It was precisely towards this giant concentration of suns that the famous radio message, designed by Carl Sagan and Frank Drake, was beamed in 1974 from the massive Arecibo radio telescope. It contained, among other things, a diagram of DNA, a human figure, and the layout of our Solar System.
There is just one catch – by the time our signal covers this unimaginable distance of 25,000 light-years, the M13 cluster itself will have moved to a completely different location in space!
Equipment & Acquisition:
\- Telescope: William Optics Zenithstar 73
\- Camera: ZWO ASI 2600 MC Pro
\- Location: Balcony in the very center of Warsaw, Poland (Heavy light pollution / Bortle 9)
\- Integration time: 8 hours
#space
source
| 3,000 mlx | |
| 3 | |
| 0 |