This globular cluster is located in the torso of the Hercules constellation, about third of the way between Vega and Arcturus. It is close to my heart too, because it was the first Messier object that I saw in a telescope, and it’s beauty attracted me to astrophotography many years ago.
M13 is 145 light-years in diameter and contains over 500,000 stars. It is more than a hundred times more densely packed with stars than the neighbourhood of our Sun. The stars are so close that their collisions occasionally produce new stars.
Fun fact: In 1974, a coded Arecibo message about the human race was transmitted towards M13 to potentially contact extraterrestrial civilizations. Ironically, when the radio waves arrive there, in about 22,000 light-years, the cluster will likely have moved to a different position.
In the meantime, I was able to catch some of its photons flying the other way in my yard in Victoria.