Jun 25, 2025
The Hercules Cluster, Abell 2151 // Brian Diaz & Insight Observatory
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The Hercules Cluster, Abell 2151 // Brian Diaz & Insight Observatory
The Hercules Galaxy Cluster (Annotated) - by Stephane P
The Great Globular Cluster in Hercules (M13)
6/7/2022
Taken with: Celestron AVX mount and EdgeHD 800 optical tube, Celestron OAG, ZWO 174mini guide camera, ZWO ASI294 MC Pro camera
10s x 60 Exposures
Controlled With: Hand Control, ASIAIR Plus
Process: ASI DeepStack, Photoshop for noise reduction and contrast increase
Stargazing Or Die Trying
This evening, I had a solid observing session. Given all the light pollution, and less than perfect skies, I’m still pretty darn proud of how these turned out.
Mercury (photo 1-2): first photo was taken with iPhone XR using the NightCap app. Second was with the Canon M50. This little planet just happens to be my favorite. The length of a day on Mercury is about 59 Earth days, but a year is only 88 Earth days, making it the worst place for Monday to possibly exist.
M44, the Beehive Cluster (partial): these bees aren’t bees. They don’t make honey, but they are known to host these sweet exoplanets known as Hot Jupiters; massive gas giants that closely orbit their home stars.
M13, the Hercules Cluster: in the 1970’s, we beamed a ‘WYD?’ message towards this massive cluster, from the Arecibo Observatory, with our location and our deets. It’s unknown if M13 ever received our message; if so, it left us on ‘Read’.
Arcturus: located in the constellation Böotes, its official abbreviation is Alpha Boo, which is kind of hilarious. The light emitted from this red giant is about 37 years old, and its the fourth brightest in the night sky.
Every photo with the exception of the first one was taken with Canon M50 camera, using a Celestron 6SE telescope. Edited in PS Express.
The Hercules Cluster of Galaxies
Image Credit & Copyright: Howard Trottier
Explanation: These are galaxies of the Hercules Cluster, an archipelago of island universes a mere 500 million light-years away. Also known as Abell 2151, this cluster is loaded with gas and dust rich, star-forming spiral galaxies but has relatively few elliptical galaxies, which lack gas and dust and the associated newborn stars.
The colors in this deep composite image clearly show the star forming galaxies with a blue tint and galaxies with older stellar populations with a yellowish cast. The sharp picture spans about 1/2 degree across the cluster center, corresponding to over 4 million light-years at the cluster's estimated distance.
Diffraction spikes around brighter foreground stars in our own Milky Way galaxy are produced by the imaging telescope's mirror support vanes. In the cosmic vista many galaxies seem to be colliding or merging while others seem distorted - clear evidence that cluster galaxies commonly interact. In fact, the Hercules Cluster itself may be seen as the result of ongoing mergers of smaller galaxy clusters and is thought to be similar to young galaxy clusters in the much more distant, early Universe.
Abell 2151 - Hercules Cluster (NGC-6050 Brightest Member)
The Hercules Cluster, Abell 2151 // SteveDSWM
The Hercules Cluster, "610+ Galaxies in One frame" // Bob Stevenson
Click below the cut to see where all these galaxies are!