In 1716, English astronomer Edmond Halley noted, "This is but a little Patch, but it shews itself to the naked Eye, when the Sky is serene and the Moon absent." Of course, M13 is now less modestly recognized as the Great Globular Cluster in Hercules, one of the brightest globular star clusters in the northern sky. Telescopic views reveal the spectacular cluster's hundreds of thousands of stars. At a distance of 25,000 light-years, the cluster stars crowd into a region 150 light-years in diameter. Approaching the cluster core upwards of 100 stars could be contained in a cube just 3 light-years on a side. For comparison, the closest star to the Sun is over 4 light-years away. Along with the cluster's dense core, the outer reaches of M13 are highlighted in this sharp color image. The cluster's evolved red and blue giant stars show up in yellowish and blue tints.On Friday 12 May at 4:30pm CEST, we will be live from the CERN Data Centre with three European astronauts:
CERN is not just the home of the Large Hadron Collider - it hosts a variety of experiments, control centres and services related to space. The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-02) is a particle physics detector that looks for dark matter, antimatter and missing matter from a module attached to the outside of the International Space Station (ISS). It was assembled at CERN and physicists receive and analyse the data sent by AMS at the AMS Payload Operations Control Centre (POCC) at CERN. Also UNOSAT, which has been hosted by CERN’s IT department since its inception in 2001, relies on the Laboratory’s IT infrastructure to produce extremely precise maps of regions of the world affected or threatened by natural disaster or conflict, based on very high resolution satellite images.
Join us live in the CERN Data Centre, where the astronauts will be answering your questions, so post them in the comments section of the live.
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