New Forest Observatory ®

The Great Globular Cluster M13 in the constellation Hercules is pretty well known to all who scan the Northern Hemisphere skies.  It is probably the most beautiful globular cluster in the Northern Hemisphere both visually, and for imaging.  This is a great object to capture as it can stand its own both as a widefield object or as a much closer up (magnified) image.  The only thing you must be careful not to do is oversaturate the core of M13 (which is quite easy to do) otherwise your subsequent processing will not be able to pull out individual stars right into the core.  M13 is a colourful globular, and if your processing is up to maintaining good star colour, you will see many red giants dotted around the cluster.  The trick to getting a good M13 image is to take very many well-focused, but short sub-exposures.  I typically do not go beyond 2-minute subs for M13 images with either the Hyperstar or the Sky 90.  An evening’s worth of 100 sub-exposures should provide you with good smooth data to work with.  There is also the added benefit of course that it is possible to get good images of M13 even with the Moon up and causing mischief 🙂  M13 was dicovered by Edmond Halley (yes the comet man) in 1714, and on a good clear night [and in the right position] it is just naked-eye from the New Forest Observatory.

Make the most of imaging this one, it usually marks the end of imaging season for at least the next month 🙁

This month’s imaging object is a star – but a rather special star of course – it is La Superba, one of the redest stars in the sky and it resides in the constellation Canes Venatici (the Hunting Dogs).  La Superba (Gamma Canum Venaticorum) is a semi-regular variable star, it is also a Carbon star and at a temperature of around 2800K it is one of the coldest true stars known.  La Superba is therefore a pretty unique object and highly worthy of our attention.  La Superba may, or may not be in your telescope’s “go to” database – if it isn’t you will need the co-ordinates which are R.A. 12h 45m 07.83s Dec. +45 26′ 24.92”.  You won’t need particularly long subs as La Superba will be between magnitude +4.8 and +6.3 – but it is certainly worth getting as many subs as you can to obtain a nice smooth image.

Wishing you clear April skies and the opportunity to get some great data on this unique object!