NAKED EYE AND BINOCULAR TARGETS

Sweep your binoculars around Hercules to see some fascinating sights

1 Messier 92

This magnitude +6.3 globular cluster looks like a fuzzy star in binoculars. Some 26,000 light years away, it’s over 12 billion years old and contains around 300,000 stars. It’s often overlooked since bigger and brighter Messier 13 is so close.

2 Great Globular Cluster in Hercules

The most beautiful globular cluster in the northern sky, Messier 13 is just visible to the naked eye as a faint star, making it best seen through binoculars and telescopes. It contains around a quarter of a million stars tightly packed together.

3 The Keystone of Hercules

This trapezium shape, comprising the stars Pi, Eta, Zeta and Epsilon Herculis, is one of the northern sky’s most famous asterisms. Once located, it will help you find the pretty globular star clusters Messier 13 and Messier 92 through your binocular.

4The Ring Nebula (Messier 57)

At magnitude +8.8, the most famous planetary nebula in the sky is too faint to be seen with the naked eye, but binoculars will show it as a green-hued, out-of-focus star. It lies more than 1,400 light years from Earth.

5 Vega (Alpha Lyrae)

The fifth-brightest star in the sky, bluewhite Vega is only 25 light years away from Earth, making it one of the closest bright stars to us. In 12,000 BCE it was the pole star. In around 210,000 years’ time it will be the brightest star in the sky.