Chandeliers of the galaxy, these distant stellar swarms fire our sense of wonder. Hop on and we'll tour 16 of season's finest globular clusters! 

Amateur favorite
The globular cluster M13 has a diameter of 145 light-years and lies 25,100 light-years from Earth in the direction of Hercules. Like most globulars, it's rich in evolved red giants.
SDSS

When it comes to sidewalk astronomy, the Moon, planets, and bright double stars always rate two thumbs up. But never doubt the power of globular star clusters. These stellar treasure troves rate right up there with Saturn and Jupiter when it comes to making an impression on first-time stargazers.

While the visual and emotional impact of a planet is immediate, globular clusters have this delicious, built-in delay between recognizing what they're looking at and then truly seeing it. I love the moment of silence before the realization sets in, followed a second or two later by something along the lines of, "Oh my God, I can't believe all those STARS!"

Every season has its share of globulars, though pickings are slim in winter. Things heat up in the spring and grow white-hot in the summer as the Teapot of Sagittarius makes its appearance at nightfall. Globulars are densely packed, generally spherical star clusters with anywhere from 10,000 up to 1 million or more stars. They orbit the center of the galaxy in a halo, the reason we see far more of them in summer, when we face toward galactic center, than in winter, when we gaze outward toward the anti-center.

Like moths in the lamplight
This artist’s impression shows how the Milky Way galaxy would look when viewed from almost edge on. Shown are the disk, riddled with star-blocking dust clouds, the central bulge, and globular clusters (added by the author) in the halo.
ESO / NASA / JPL-Caltech / M. Kornmesser / R.Hurt

Globular clusters' approximately spherical distribution about the galaxy's central bulge is thought to trace the margins of our galaxy in its youth, when the Milky Way was in the process of collapsing from multiple smaller clouds of gas and dust. The originally modest rotation of the material increased during the collapse and spun itself into a flattened disk, leaving the globulars as lonely "sentries" guarding the fringes of a great stellar empire. It's no surprise then that the clusters are the Methuselahs of the night sky, ancient assemblages of stars 10 billion years and older. Many of their original Sun-like, main-sequence stars have evolved into bloated red giants.

Packing it in
Globulars are classified according to degree of concentration, ranging from most compact (I) to least (XII).
Diagram: Bob King; Photos: Hunter Wilson

Globular clusters come in a variety of sizes and are distinguished by how tightly their stars are packed. Some are standing room only with cores so compressed, they stubbornly resist resolution in even the largest amateur telescopes. Other clusters are loose enough to give away all their stars even at low magnification. Astronomers classify these "degrees of concentration" according to the Shapley–Sawyer Concentration Class on a scale of I–XII (1–12), where Class I is the most concentrated and XII the least.

Distance can also be an important factor in resolving a cluster. M4 in Scorpius, the closest globular to Earth, lies just 7,200 light years away, while NGC 2419 is more than 40 times that far, twice as distant as the Large Magellanic Cloud. I can easily resolve many stars of M4 in my 10-inch reflector but only a few faint twinkles in NGC 2419's outer halo.

Spring globular hop
Our featured 16 globulars include almost every variety and most are visible in modest scopes.
Map: Bob King; Source: Stellarium

For our 16 featured globular clusters, I chose those that are well-placed during early evening hours from mid-May through early June. The Sagittarius and Ophiuchus hoards follow closely on the heels of this spring sampler, so I encourage you to pursue these beautiful balls of stars right through the summer. Here's a list of them all to keep the fire burning.

The current selection varies across the spectrum in size and degree of concentration, offering a delightful cross-section of what to expect from this surprisingly diverse cluster type.

Down south finder map
To help locate the globulars in the southern half of the main chart, use this map, which shows stars to magnitude +6.5 and has key reference stars marked. Click to enlarge and print out.
Stellarium

Globulars benefit from medium and high magnifications — I like between 125× and 225× as a good balance between resolution, seeing conditions, and aesthetic appeal. Too much magnification robs a glob's character and softens the stars, detracting from the starry pinpoint effect.

Up north finder
Use this deeper chart to find the northern globular clusters in our sample. Stars are shown to magnitude +7. Click to enlarge and print out.
Stellarium

Let's check out some highlights! All observations were made from a somewhat light-polluted site with a 15-inch reflector and 10×50 binoculars. The clusters ranged in brightness from magnitude +5.7 to +10.8. All are visible in an 8-inch scope and most in a 6-inch with varying degrees of resolution.

Hanging loose
M68 in Hydra, a Class X cluster, shows a well-resolved halo and lots of stars across its core.
Hunter Wilson
  • M68 — Near the meridian at nightfall, this rich, moderately compact cluster's halo is peppered with faint stars even at a magnification of 64×. Increasing the power to 142× revealed a good number of individual stars draped across the core.
  • NGC 4147 — Dim, small and rather difficult to resolve. Brightest stars are only about magnitude +14.5, so use high magnification.
  • M53 — Rich, medium-compressed with partial resolution of the halo using 64×, this cluster's brightest star (~13 magnitude) lies a short distance due north of the core. Some resolution of the central core occurs at 142×. Upping to 245×, two short tendrils of stars extended southeast and northwest through the halo.
  • NGC 5053 — What strange ghost is this? Large and composed of very faint stars from about magnitude +14 on down, which give the cluster a misty appearance that nonetheless resolves in a swarm of the tiniest pinpoints even at 64×. At 142×, the cluster is well-resolved, and the stars seem spread about with no concentration. Astronomers have discovered a tidal bridge of stars that winds back toward neighboring M53, hinting that the two clusters may have interacted in the past.
Big, bright, incredible!
Known since antiquity, Omega Centauri spans 36′, larger than the full Moon. Its millions of stars appear remarkably uniform in brightness. Combined with a loose structure (Class VIII), the whole resembles a glittering pile of sand grains.
ESO
  • Omega Centauri (NGC 5139)— Grand! With 10 times the mass of a typical globular and spanning an incredible 230 light-years, this is the Jabba the Hutt of clusters. Years ago, I easily saw its blur-ball shape with the naked eye from Tucson, Arizona. Even in a portable 3-inch scope, it was all glitter. Someday I'll get to see this from a proper latitude in a nice 12-inch scope. Definitely one for the bucket list. With a declination of –47½°, Omega Cen stands just 3° high at latitude 40° N — worth a try if you've got a good southern horizon. Look shortly before 11 p.m. local time in mid-May when the cluster crosses the meridian.
  • M3 —Harbinger of spring and a perennial favorite. I must look at this cluster at least 10 times a year. Like a painting by Van Gogh, one never tires of revisiting a favorite deep sky object to appreciate the familiar and see something new. The bright halo stars are well-resolved in an 8-inch, while the stars on the core's near side hover over the unresolved background glow in a very 3-D way. The effect is very eye-catching. If you don't see it at first, use a little imagination.
  • NGC 5466 — This is another faint, large and loose globular. It resembles NGC 5053, but it's a bit brighter, richer, and somewhat more compressed. The brightest stars sparkle around magnitude +13. It's well-resolved into a shimmery cloud of sparkles at 64×. Astronomers have recently uncovered a 45° long tidal stream of stars with an average width of 1.4° extending from this cluster to reach all the way to Ursa Major. Bread crumbs to find its way home? More likely stars stripped from the cluster during its passage through the flat disk of the Milky Way.
  • NGC 5634 — What? A globular cluster in Virgo? OK, it looks like a galaxy, or even better, a comet, but it really is a pile of stars. At 64×, the cluster is small and compressed, with no stars resolved. Going to 142× puts a few faint stars in the outer halo, but things get much more exciting at 242×. At that magnification, the halo tentatively resolves into hundreds of tiny, faint sparks. Beautiful if fleeting! I couldn't crack the core, though. A bright, magnitude +8 orange star 1′ east of the globular adds pizzazz.
Take this one for a whirl
This photo hints at the whorls of stars that wrap around the core of M5, a class V globular. The cluster is one of the oldest known with an age 13 billion years. It's located 24,500 light-years from Earth in the direction of Scorpius. Like M13 and Omega Centauri, M5 is faintly visible to the naked eye.
Robert J. Vanderbei / CC BY 2.5
  • M5 — I'm torn between this cluster, M13, and M22 as my all-time favorite. The core here is dense and somewhat small compared to that of some globs, but the stars seem to be drawn out in great whorls that make for an entrancing view. Look for a long, parabolic arc of stars extending from southwest of the core region, under (north of) of the core and back up to the southeast. The brightest member glimmers along core's southeast edge.
  • NGC 5694 — The cluster is small and grows gradually brighter toward the center. I was unable to resolve this cluster but I'm not surprised. It's one of the most remote with a distance of 114,000 light-years.
  • NGC 5824 — This one's tiny, with a bright, compact nearly stellar core. No stars resolved in my scope but that may have been because of the cluster's –33° declination in Lupus. This distant cluster is 104,000 light-years from Earth.
  • NGC 5897 — It's little, concentrated, and faint, but still incredibly rich with dim stars. 142× gave a fantastic view. It resembles NGC 5466.
  • NGC 5986 — At nearly –38°declination, NGC 5986 is a little too far south for a good view at my location. Other observers report it as bright and moderately compact, with a sprinkling of stars resolved across the face in an 8-inch scope. A bright magnitude +11.2 member lies northeast of the core.
  • NGC 6229 — This glob is small and bright with a bright, concentrated core. It looks just like a comet. I wasn't able to resolve it at 64×, but 142× showed a grainy halo. In good seeing with averted vision and 245×, the halo crystallized into countless stars of magnitude +14 or fainter. The core resisted my efforts to resolve.
Wings and strings
Using an 8-inch f/5 telescope, amateur Michael Vlasov captured both the chains of stars dangling from the core as well as the small, dark "propeller" just to the right of cluster center. North is up.
Michael Vlasov
  • M13 — This cluster is so jammed with starriness that even your dad would be impressed. 300,000 stars squeeze into the space of 20′. The halo is remarkable for the 4–5 stringy chains of stellar points that extend north and south of the core like the legs of a crab. Look for three narrow, relatively star-poor dark lanes east of the cluster's center nicknamed "the Propeller."  A 6-inch scope will resolve many stars in M13's halo and even some across the core. In a 15-inch, it's downtown Las Vegas! Like M3, stars hover over the core, evoking a three-dimensional sense of depth.
  • M92 — If you've come here by way of M13, the first thing you might notice is how much more tightly compressed this globular's core is. The halo is a diverse mix of both relatively bright and fainter stars and easy to resolve. Using 245× I could partially cleave the core into stars.
Dogsledding far from home
My crude attempt to simulate the night sky were Earth moved to the center of a globular cluster.
Bob King / Stellarium / Background image of M4 cluster by the Hubble Space Telescope / NASA / ESA

Ever wonder what it would be like to live on a planet in the heart of a globular cluster? The average density of stars in a typical cluster is about one per light-year, but in the core, it's more like one star per solar system diameter. Needless to say, the sky there would be crammed with thousands of stars so bright they'd cast more light than multiple full Moons! Something to think about the next time you look M13 in the eye.

Comments


Image of Ernie Ostuno

Ernie Ostuno

May 17, 2017 at 2:08 pm

Great descriptions and great finder charts. I'll have to look for the "propellor", since I never noticed that effect before. I always tell people to look for "Einstein's silhouette" when I show them M13; the many star chains extending from the core of the cluster resemble his wayward strands of hair. Another description I've used for bright resolvable globulars like M3 and M5 is "a pile of salt grains" that flash on and off with averted vision.

Question: are planets possible in globulars? I have read they are ancient aggregations that formed when the galaxy formed and no heavier elements are available for planetary disks such as occur in the spiral arms of galaxies.

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Image of Bob King

Bob King

May 17, 2017 at 2:37 pm

Hi Ernie,
Thanks! I like Einstein's hair -- that's a new one for me 🙂 Those really ancient clusters have very little dust, so planets would be small and scare if present. There are higher metallicity clusters in the bulge where more material would be available to build planets.

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Image of SNH

SNH

May 18, 2017 at 2:30 pm

Awesome article Bob - and way to highlight the more obscure ones in Libra, Virgo, and Lupus! Of all the globs that you toured, I've found only three aren't visible to me with my naked eyes and 7x35 binoculars. Those are NGC 5634, NGC 5053, and NGC 5694. Of those, I've seen NGC 5053 and NGC 5634 in my 8x56 binoculars. Of course at 36.1 degrees latitude I can see deeper to the south then most! Great job!! And you alerted me to the idea that NGC 5824 is actually the most distant GC I've seen in 7x35 binoculars at 104,000 light-years.

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Image of Bob King

Bob King

May 19, 2017 at 12:33 am

Scott,

Thank you! You always get the most from your eyes and binoculars -- certainly more than most people I know.

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Image of Stub Mandrel

Stub Mandrel

May 19, 2017 at 4:14 pm

Lovely overview Bob, I greatly enjoyed the read.

Stub.

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Image of Bob King

Bob King

May 20, 2017 at 10:31 am

Thank you, Stub. I appreciate your kind comment.

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Image of Howard Ritter

Howard Ritter

May 21, 2017 at 1:02 pm

Thanks for the list, Bob. Nice summation of what's on the spring smorgasbord of globulars. And I second your thoughts about Omega Centauri. I got my first good view of this monster at the OzSky Star Safari last month from rural Australia. My first impression looking at it with 8x56 binoculars was that it looked brighter, bigger, and starrier than M13 does through my 155mm apo refractor. (Of course, the other night my first seasonal view of M13 through the refractor at 90x showed it bigger than Omega at 8x, but with our suburban light pollution, still not as bright and starry.) And through the 18" Dob at OzSky, at about 75x Omega was simply gobsmacking, as they say in Oz. Wall-to-wall stars, fully resolved and well seen as discrete pinpoint sources. My enduring impression of the big-Dob view of Omega is that, for the first time, I was getting a direct, in-person, real-time view of a deep-sky object that looked as good as the time-exposure photographs of it that we've all seen, and all the better for the superior dynamic range of direct vision and the knowing that I was actually look at the real thing. I've never before had that particular experience. I nearly got photon poisoning! All DSO/globular enthusiasts owe themselves a trip far enough south to see not only Omega Centauri, but 47 Tucanae as well – different personality, equal spectacle!

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Image of Bob King

Bob King

May 22, 2017 at 12:58 am

Howard,
Beautiful description of viewing Omega Centauri in a big scope! Wow! Now I feel my life won't be complete without experiencing it the same way.

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Image of Graham-Wolf

Graham-Wolf

May 29, 2017 at 7:22 pm

Nice work, Bob!!

You mentioned NGC5139 Omega Centauri. It is the defining glob bike us "southerners" grow up with and never forget. Who needs a telescope when a binoc or even naked eye will blow your mind. At 46 south nz, you just look up to the pointers near the southern cross, hang a 5 or so deg left to locate epsilon Centauri, then extend that again by a similar margin.

There it is.... Wow! We kiwis don,t know how lucky we are.
Showed it to Patrick in the 1980s when he visited no for the first time.
He nearly cried on the spot.... You can only see so much from Selsey, UK.

Best wishes from 46 south, nz.
Graham..w.wolf

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Image of Bob King

Bob King

May 29, 2017 at 9:07 pm

Hi Graham,

Good to have you back. Thanks! Though I've seen it in a 3-incher, Omega VERY big on my bucket list for viewing in a bigger scope. A 12-inch would be nice.

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Image of Graham-Wolf

Graham-Wolf

May 29, 2017 at 7:24 pm

Defining globbie..... Globular cluster.
We can also claim 47 Tuc.
Boy oh boy. We have it good!

GRaham.w.wolf

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Image of Russ

Russ

June 6, 2017 at 3:17 am

Hi Bob,
Once again a very nice writeup for us visual observers. I remember a few years ago using the Sky and Telescope Pocket Sky Atlas to look at the dozens of globulars in the Summer sky. I used a go-to 11-inch SCT, which I've had for about 10 years. But after over 45 years of using a finder scope and star atlas, I don't begrudge my tired old back the convenience of modern technology. Most times I don't even mount the finder, just a Telrad for aligning the mount.

Recently I was able to observe (photographically) the globular cluster NGC 2419 (Caldwell 25), sometimes called the "Intergalactic Wanderer". At some 300,000 light-years distance it is much further from the Milky Way's center than even the Magellanic Clouds. Being located in Lynx this one is best seen in Winter. But it would be a good one to keep in mind considering its great distance.

I may take a Summer globular cluster tour in a few weeks when attending the 2017 Golden State Star Party. A few years ago a man at the star party, using a 10-inch Dob said his favorite globular was M4. He said it wasn't the run of the mill globular, having "character". It certainly is different.

Best Regards,
Russ

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Image of Bob King

Bob King

June 6, 2017 at 10:15 am

Hi Rusty,

Thank you. And thanks for mentioning NGC 2419, which I've always considered a nice challenge in seeing and resolving its halo stars. I like how each of us has certain favorites depending on our particular perception and esthetic.

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Image of Jim White

Jim White

June 12, 2017 at 6:27 pm

Excellent article! Globulars are my favorite, and as you note bright globulars can be great "showpieces" for first-timers. I enjoy M13, also like to check out its "neighbor", galaxy NGC 6207 through my 15-inch scope.

Jim White

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Image of Bob King

Bob King

June 12, 2017 at 6:44 pm

Thank you, Jim. I also enjoy looking up M13's galactic neighbor when I drop by.

You must be logged in to post a comment.

You must be logged in to post a comment.