Starry Night This Week

Each week most PBS stations air "Jack Horkheimer: Star Gazer", the world's first and only weekly TV series on naked-eye astronomy. The Starry Night images on this page illustrate the show for the week of Monday July 15, 2002. You can view the complete show script, or watch a RealPlayer video of the show.

A Cosmic City Of A Million Stars And How To Find It

A group of four dim stars form an uneven four-sided figure known as the "keystone" of Hercules, the torso of the giant. Find the constellation of Hercules by drawing an imaginary line between Arcturus and Vega.

The Great Hercules Cluster is one of the skies most precious jewels and without doubt the finest and one of the easiest to locate globular clusters in the northern hemisphere. Visible to the naked eye under dark skies, M13 looks like a fuzzy ball brightening towards the centre in binoculars. A moderate sized telescope and high magnification shows a blazing ball of stars with many resolved members. A remarkable cluster.

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Click here for an archive of the past shows.