M13 - Great Globular Cluster in Hercules
       
     
M45 - The Pleiades
       
     
M15 - Globular Cluster in Pegasus
       
     
M13 - The Great Globular Cluster in Hercules (Alternate)
       
     
M13 - Great Globular Cluster in Hercules
       
     
M13 - Great Globular Cluster in Hercules

This is the final image of M13, stretched and processed from a stack of 115 frames.

This globular cluster is in the asterism in Hercules known as "The Keystone." It is about 145 light years across, and contains over 300,000 stars, all gravitationally bound and orbiting the Milky Way.

"Every passing hour brings the Solar System forty-three thousand miles closer to Globular Cluster M13 in Hercules – and still there are some misfits who insist that there is no such thing as progress." - Kurt Vonnegut

M45 - The Pleiades
       
     
M45 - The Pleiades

This is the final image of M45, stretched and processed from a stack of 192 frames.

I shot M45 on December 23, 2014 while waiting for Comet Lovejoy to rise, which was my real target for the evening.

Captured with a TeleVue-76 on an Atlas EQ-G (tracked, not guided), and a Canon 60-D DSLR. 182 Subs, 31 Darks 42 @ 13 seconds, ISO 3200. 105 @ 15 seconds, ISO 1600. 35 @ 20 seconds, ISO 3200

Processed with PixInsight

"This song of the waters is audible to every ear, but there is other music in these hills, by no means audible to all. To hear even a few notes of it you must first live here for a long time, and you must know the speech of hills and rivers. Then on a still night, when the campfire is low and the Pleiades have climbed over rimrocks, sit quietly and listen for a wolf to howl, and think hard of everything you have seen and tried to understand. Then you may hear it a vast pulsing harmony its score inscribed on a thousand hills, its notes the lives and deaths of plants and animals, its rhythms spanning the seconds and the centuries." - Aldo Leopold

M15 - Globular Cluster in Pegasus
       
     
M15 - Globular Cluster in Pegasus

This is the final image of M15, stretched and processed from a stack of 70 frames.

I shot M15 on December 23, 2014 while waiting for Comet Lovejoy to rise, which was my real target for the evening. Usually with Globs I like to shoot with my 10” Newtonian, but I was shooting with the TeleVue to prepare for Lovejoy.

Captured with a TeleVue-76 on an Atlas EQ-G (tracked, not guided), and a Canon 60-D DSLR. 60 Subs @ 15 seconds, ISO 1600. 10 Darks. Processed with PixInsight

This globular cluster is in the constellation Pegasus. It is about 33,000 light years away, and is one of the most densely packed Globular Clusters in the Milky Way.

M13 - The Great Globular Cluster in Hercules (Alternate)
       
     
M13 - The Great Globular Cluster in Hercules (Alternate)

This is the an alternate final of M13, stretched and processed from a stack of 115 frames. This stack was processed differently in PixInsight, with a more aggressive clipping of the low signal.  This results clearer core, but a smaller "feeling" cluster.

This globular cluster is in the asterism in Hercules known as "The Keystone." It is about 145 light years across, and contains over 300,000 stars, all gravitationally bound and orbiting the Milky Way.

"Every passing hour brings the Solar System forty-three thousand miles closer to Globular Cluster M13 in Hercules – and still there are some misfits who insist that there is no such thing as progress." - Kurt Vonnegut