SOCO IMAGE GALLERY


 

M 5     (NGC 5904) 

M 5 is a bright, beautiful globular cluster along the western edge of the late Spring constellation Serpens Caput. It has a physical diameter of around 150 LY and lies at a distance of 26,620 LY. Visually, it is a bit smaller than M 13 in Hercules, which is not far away in the Spring sky. Still, it is a very impressive object in telescopes. It has a visual magnitude of 5.7 and thus should be visible to the naked eye, but in this situation it is not easy to distinguish visually the cluster from the nearby 5th-magnitude star 5 Serpentis (along the bottom edge in my image).
M 5 was first observed by the German astronomer Gottfried Kirch in May of 1702. Since this observation was not published at the time, Charles Messier is credited with independently discovering this object in May of 1764. As with M 13, it was William Herschel in 1791 that first observed that M 5 was composed of individual stars.

Date(s) Acquired: 14 April 2016
Telescope: Orion 120mm EON Apochromatic Refractor
Camera: QSI Model 583 with Optec NextGEN Ultra Widefield 0.7X Telecompressor

 

   Exposure Time (min) 
   Number of Exposures
   RGB
   1
   Hα
   -
   Hβ
   -
   OIII
   -
   RGB
   20
   Hα
   0
   Hβ
   0
   OIII
   0

 

Processing:
Master red, green, and blue images created using SuperSIAM.
Color composite image created using Basic Processing Procedure III.
Color composite image contrast-stretched using Adobe Photoshop.




 

 

HOMEReturn to SOCO Image Gallery HOMEReturn to SOCO Main Page

Questions or comments? Email SOCO@cat-star.org