M13 is one of the brightest and most famous globular clusters, containing hundreds of thousands of stars in Hercules.
What It Is
One of the brightest and most famous globular clusters, containing hundreds of thousands of stars packed into a relatively small region.
History
In 1974, humanity sent the Arecibo Message toward M13 - a symbolic radio broadcast meant to represent Earth.
Science Notes
- The core is extremely dense - stars can be only a fraction of a light-year apart.
- Likely contains hundreds of thousands to over a million stars.
- If you lived near the center, the sky would never be dark.
- age
- ~11-12 billion years
- distance
- ~22,000-25,000 light-years (~130-150 quadrillion miles)
- width
- ~140-170 light-years (~820-1,000 trillion miles)
