A "quickie" before the clouds...

That night seemed to be a good one for some astrophoto but, while trying to obtain a good phocus with a bright star, I saw far in the horizon the nightmare of the astronomers. The clouds were starting to form in the coast and the slow winds were coming towards me so it was clear that the night was about to be ruined. With the dissapointed already settled, I decided to give a go to a target close to where I was phocusing and to take the most light possible before the clouds roll in.

M13  (Messier 13 or The Great Globular Cluster) was alredy hunted by me while starting on astrophotography. An easy to locate target in Hercules, bright and amazing as it is composed of 300,000 stars with a brightness of 5.8 and located at around 22000 ly outside our galaxy.

I only had time for 10x120" lights, and some darks and bias with the 70mm refractor (ETX-70) on a HEQ-5 and a unmodded NIKON d3100. Stacked with DSS and processed with StarTools and Photoshop.

Enjoy!

The image annotated:

And the old picture close to the new one for comparison: