M13 / NGC 6205

 

M 13 is one of the best-known globular clusters in the northern celestial sphere. At a distance of 25,000 light years, its angular diameter of 23 arc minutes corresponds to an area of ​​150 light years. M 13 contains a number of 100000 stars, in his book Galaxies Timothy Ferris speaks even of "more than a million". Toward the center of the stars are about 500 times denser than in the solar neighborhood. The age of M13 has determined Sandage and Arp 24 billion years to 17 billion years around 1960, and later (1962) revised Arp its value to 14 billion years (by Kenneth Glyn Jones).

Copyright by Bernd Blaudzun