globular cluster · Draco Photography Blog

M92, May 2021

Most commonly overshadowed by its slightly more majestic partner in the Hercules constellation (M13), M92 is still one of the most prominent globular clusters of the northern skies at only around 27 thousand light-years distance. There’s something alluring to me about globular clusters in particular, perhaps related to their age–nearly as old as our galaxy itself–or simply just because I like to imagine what the night sky would look like if our solar system were inside one.

globular cluster

M13, May 2021

With a spare hour of dark sky at the end of a recent session, I decided that instead of packing up early and getting some extra sleep, I’d see what I could do with M13 squarely at zenith. Considering that M13 was my first ever deep-sky target, I’m pretty pleased with how this one turned out, helps show me what a couple years of practice and investment can do. My previous attempts at M13

globular cluster

M13 (Reprocessed)

Another story of revisiting a previous target with a bit more experience. A similar story to my introduction to imaging Jupiter, this shot was originally taken in July of 2019, and mostly due to inexperience there was only a single usable light frame (of 30 seconds total exposure) to work with and processing it was just tweaking levels in Photoshop to get it looking as good as possible. I figured now that I was a little bit more comfortable with PixInsight, it might be time to revisit the old data and see if I could clean it up any.