Great Hercules Cluster

I originally had this saved simply as a globular cluster. Comparing the stars around it with reference sky imagery confirms that it is M13, the Great Hercules Cluster.

That bright snowball is not one object. It is a swarm of more than 100,000 stars packed together about 25,000 light-years away. Near the center, the stars are roughly a hundred times more crowded than they are around our Sun.

M13 is bright enough to find with binoculars under a dark sky, but the photograph reveals why globular clusters are so strange: the center looks almost solid until individual points of light begin to resolve around the edges.