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A Galactic Fossil
M13 is one of the fuzzy blobs cataloged by the French comet hunter Charles
Messier back in the late 1700s. messier did not care what objects were in
his catalog; he just wanted to note objects that could be confused with
comets. The resulting Messier catalog is a wonderful collection of star
clusters, galaxies, and nebulae that provides numerous targets for the
amateur astronomer.
M13, in the constellation Hercules, is one of the largest of over 100
globular clusters in our Galaxy. Located about 25,000 light-years away, it
contains about half a million stars packed into a ball only tens of light
years in diameter. Globular cluseters formed in the earliest days of our
Galaxy and contain some of the oldest stars in the Universe. The age of the
stars in these closters thus provides an important constraint on our
estimates of the age of the entire Universe.
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