July 29
As the sky grows dark on very clear evenings this week, an ancient star pattern can be found almost directly overhead: Hercules, the mighty strong man and hero of many legends.
The stars that compose this pattern are, for the most part, rather dim, and it seems rather incongruent that for such a powerful figure. It is supposed to represent a kneeling man and was known as the "Kneeling One" in pre-Greek cultures.
A check of a number of various stargazing guidebooks might suggest you look for a large crooked letter H, or even a butterfly that can be traced out in several different ways.
A third of the way down the Hercule's western edge is the famous star cluster M 13, which may be glimpsed with the unaided eye. It is a celebrated object; the brightest and most dramatic example of a globular cluster north of the celestial equator, often referred simply as "The Great Hercules Cluster." It's a concentration of over 100,000 stars, located at a distance of roughly 23,000 light years from us.
Globular clusters are masses of stars that typically lie on the outskirts of our galaxy.
go