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Name / Constellation

M 5

 Other: NGC 5904, GCL 34

Ser
Coordinates AR: 15h 18m 33.75s - Dec: +02° 04′ 57.7″
Optics Takahashi FSQ 106N APO Fluorite F5 - 60/220 guiding refractor
Camera-Mount SBIG STF8300M - Orion StarShot Guider - 10Micron GM2000 QCI Mount
Filters Baader LRGB
Exposure
  • Lum
  • Red
  • Green
  • Blue
  • 12 x 300 sec - 1 hour
  • 12 x 180 sec - 36 min
  • 12 x 180 sec - 36 min
  • 12 x 180 sec - 36 min
  • UNBINNED
  • BINNING 2X2
  • BINNING 2X2
  • BINNING 2X2
Location / Date Promiod (Valle D'Aosta-Italy) "TLP" Remote Observatory - 30 may 2019
Seeing About 3.2 " @ 2.1 arcosec/pixel unbinned
Note Bad seeing
Acquisition MaxIm DL - CCD Autopilot 5
Processing Adobe Photoshop CS6 -
Comment

Messier 5 or M5 (also designated NGC 5904) is a globular cluster in the constellation Serpens. It was discovered by Gottfried Kirch in 1702. M5 is, under extremely good conditions, just visible to the naked eye as a faint "star" near the star 5 Serpentis. Binoculars or small telescopes will identify the object as non-stellar while larger telescopes will show some individual stars, of which the brightest are of apparent magnitude 12.2.

M5 was discovered by German astronomer Gottfried Kirch in 1702 when he was observing a comet. Charles Messier also noted it in 1764, but thought it was a nebula without any stars associated with it. William Herschel was the first to resolve individual stars in the cluster in 1791, counting roughly 200. Spanning 165 light-years in diameter, M5 is one of the largest known globular clusters. The gravitational sphere of influence of M5, (i.e. the volume of space in which stars are gravitationally bound to it rather than being torn away by the Milky Way's gravitational pull) has a radius of some 200 light-years.

At 13 billion years old, M5 is also one of the eldest globular clusters in the Milky Way Galaxy. Its distance is about 24,500 light-years from Earth, and it contains more than 100,000 stars, as many as 500,000 according to some estimates.