The Star Cluster in Hercules

Several hundred thousand suns, drawn in June 1877.

Chart: The Trouvelot Astronomical Drawings
Plate: Plate XIV
Astronomer: Étienne Léopold Trouvelot
Date: 1881
Held by: New York Public Library · via Wikimedia Commons

Plate XIVfrom a study made in June 1877

Format

The full-resolution scan, color-managed to the source — yours to print, study, and explore.

Size

$29.00

The story

Plate XIV of The Trouvelot Astronomical Drawings, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1881: the star cluster Messier 13 in Hercules, from a study Étienne Léopold Trouvelot made in June 1877. Edmond Halley found the cluster in 1714, and Charles Messier entered it on June 1, 1764, in his list of objects not to mistake for comets. It is a globular cluster about 145 light-years across, holding several hundred thousand stars, between 22,200 and 25,000 light-years away. Its single stars were first resolved in 1779. In 1974 the Arecibo message, a portrait of the human race, was beamed toward it. Trouvelot drew the place we later chose to write to.

See it on your wall

A window onto the heavens, in your home

The Star Cluster in Hercules printed large and framed, hung in rooms like yours. Every edition ships ready to become the piece the room is built around.

The Star Cluster in Hercules framed on the wall

About this reproduction

A faithful reproduction of a public-domain chart held by New York Public Library · via Wikimedia Commons — the work is centuries out of copyright.
Printed to order on EMA matte art paper, 200gsm. Framed pieces sit in a box frame under acrylic, with no mount (gold-ink editions on specialist press).
Color-managed to the source scan; we correct nothing and invent nothing.
Ships in 5–10 business days, rolled in a heavy-wall tube (framed pieces ship flat-packed).
If it arrives less than perfect, we reprint or refund — your choice.

Why our charts cost more than a poster: we print from the highest-resolution scans in existence, at sizes where the engraving itself becomes visible — the gold figures, the tiny stars, the cartouches — on a matte sheet that shows every line without glare.

From the same astronomer