Night - Fifty one - The Hercules Cluster

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Messier 13, or M13 (sometimes called the Great Globular Cluster in Hercules, the Hercules Globular Cluster, or the Great Hercules Cluster), is a globular cluster of several hundred thousand stars in the constellation of Hercules. Single stars in this globular cluster were first resolved in 1779. Compared to the stars in the neighborhood of the Sun, the stars of the M13 population are more than a hundred times more densely packed. They are so close together that they sometimes collide and produce new stars. The newly formed, young stars, known as "blue stragglers", are particularly interesting to astronomers. This photo is the result of of the telscope taking 137 individual photos of 60 seconds each, then stacking them on top of each other to create additional detail.

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