Where to Find Globular Clusters in the Night Sky: A Guide

You remember your first time. I certainly remember mine. It wasn’t at some fancy observatory with a telescope the size of a cannon. I was standing in a freezing backyard, shivering in a hoodie, wrestling with a shaky tripod. I pushed the telescope away from the easy stuff—the Moon, Jupiter, the things everyone looks at—and pointed it into the black void between stars.

I squinted. I nudged the tube. And then, suddenly, there it was.

It didn’t look like a star. It looked like someone had spilled diamond dust on a piece of black velvet. A fuzzy, glowing ball of light that refused to come into sharp focus. That was my first globular cluster. And if you are reading this, you probably want to find one too.

Knowing where to find globular clusters isn’t just about reading a star chart; it’s about learning how to see. These ancient cities of stars hang around the halo of our galaxy like ghosts. They are elusive for beginners, often masquerading as comets or out-of-focus stars. But once you catch one, you get hooked. I’m going to walk you through exactly how to track them down, strip away the technical jargon, and help you see the universe’s oldest relics with your own eyes.

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Key Takeaways

• Timing is Everything: You’ll have the best luck hunting these down during late spring and deep into summer if you are in the Northern Hemisphere.
• Gear Reality Check: Forget the expensive astrophotography rigs; a simple 8-inch Dobsonian or even 10×50 binoculars will show you the brightest clusters.
• The “Side-Eye” Trick: You need to master “averted vision”—looking slightly away from the object—to make the dim stars pop out.
• Prime Real Estate: The constellation Sagittarius and its neighbors (Scorpius, Ophiuchus) are absolutely packed with clusters because that’s where the galactic center lies.
• Start Here: M13 in Hercules is your training ground; Omega Centauri is the boss fight.

Why do these ancient star cities look so different from open clusters?

Before we freeze our fingers off outside, let’s get straight on what we are actually hunting. You might have seen the Pleiades. It’s that tiny dipper-shaped group of bright, blue stars. That is an “open cluster.” Think of open clusters as a kindergarten class. The stars are young, energetic, and loosely hanging out together before they eventually drift apart.

Globular clusters? They are the retirement homes of the galaxy.

We are talking about balls of gravity so intense they hold hundreds of thousands—sometimes millions—of stars in a sphere. And these stars are old. Ancient. They formed when the Milky Way was just getting its act together. Because of their age, the stars tend to be yellow and red, burning slowly through their fuel.

When you spot one in your eyepiece, the difference hits you immediately. An open cluster looks like a scattering of jewels. A globular cluster looks like a solid object. It has weight. The core is so dense that individual stars blur together into a singular, glowing mass. If you lived on a planet inside a globular cluster, you wouldn’t have a night sky. You would have a sky blazing with thousands of stars brighter than Venus, 24/7. It’s a terrifying and beautiful thought.

Do I need a massive observatory to spot them?

I hear this excuse all the time. “I’d love to see deep-sky objects, but I don’t have five thousand dollars for a telescope.”

Stop it. You don’t need NASA-grade glass to find these things. Honestly, some of my best views of globular clusters have come through a battered pair of binoculars I bought at a garage sale.

Here is why simple gear works. Globular clusters are surprisingly bright compared to galaxies or nebulae. They have high “surface brightness.” This means the light is concentrated, not spread out over a huge area. A pair of 10×50 binoculars reveals the brighter clusters as fuzzy stars that refuse to sharpen.

But if you want the “wow” factor—if you want to resolve that fuzzy ball into individual specks of light—you need aperture. Aperture is just a fancy word for the width of your telescope’s main mirror or lens. A 6-inch or 8-inch Dobsonian telescope is the sweet spot. It gathers enough light to “bust” the cluster, breaking that gray smudge into a pile of glitter. You can pick one of those up for the price of a decent TV. Don’t let gear envy keep you indoors.

What makes the Great Hercules Cluster the king of the northern summer?

If you live north of the equator, your journey starts with Messier 13 (M13). We call it the Great Hercules Cluster, but I just call it “The Showpiece.” It sits high overhead in the summer, clear of the murky atmosphere near the horizon, and it screams to be found.

Finding it is your first real test.

You need to find the “Keystone” first. Hercules isn’t a stick figure of a dude; it’s a lopsided square of four stars stuck between the incredibly bright stars Vega and Arcturus. Once you find that square—the Keystone—look at the right side (the western side). Imagine a line connecting the top and bottom stars of that side.

M13 is about a third of the way down that line.

Scan that spot with binoculars. You will see a star that looks “wrong.” It’s fuzzy. It’s glowing. That’s it. That little fuzzball is 25,000 light-years away and contains over 300,000 stars. When you put a telescope on it, the view explodes. You can spend an hour just staring at it, trying to count the outliers on the edges. It looks like a spider made of light.

Can you spot the ‘rival’ cluster M92 nearby?

Most people find M13, pack up, and go inside to drink hot cocoa. Big mistake.

Right next door, in the exact same constellation, sits M92. It is the neglected middle child of the summer sky. It’s a bit fainter than M13, sure, but I often think it’s prettier.

Why? Because it’s tighter. M13 is a bit sprawling and loose. M92 is condensed. The core is blindingly bright and snaps into focus nicely. To find it, go back to that Keystone shape. Instead of looking on the side, look above the top edge. Form a triangle with the top two stars; M92 is the point of that triangle. It’s older than M13, and looking at it feels like peering back to the very beginning of time. Give it five minutes of your time. It deserves it.

Is the Scorpion hiding treasure in its tail?

Summer nights get hot, but the sky gets hotter. As you look south, you’ll see the one constellation that actually looks like its name: Scorpius. It’s a giant S-curve of stars with a bright, beating red heart.

That red star is Antares. And right next to it is a ghost.

Messier 4 (M4) is sitting less than 1.5 degrees away from Antares. You can often fit both the star and the cluster in the same view if you use a low-power eyepiece. This is a rare treat. Antares burns with a fierce, unstable orange light, while M4 glows with a soft, ghostly pallor right beside it.

M4 is loose, distinct, and huge. It’s one of the closest globular clusters to Earth—only about 7,200 light-years away. In galactic terms, that is right on our front porch. Because it’s so close, it doesn’t look like a dense snowball; it looks like a scattered pile of salt. It’s incredibly easy to find because you just aim at Antares and nudge the scope to the right. You can’t miss it.

Why is Omega Centauri worth traveling south for?

Okay, let’s talk about the monster. The boss. The “Emperor of the Realm.”

Omega Centauri makes M13 look like a nightlight.

Here is the bad news: if you live in Canada, the UK, or northern Europe, you probably won’t see it. It hugs the southern horizon. But if you are in the southern US, or lucky enough to be in the Southern Hemisphere, this is mandatory viewing.

Omega Centauri is so big that many astronomers don’t even classify it as a normal globular cluster anymore. The leading theory is that it’s the core of a dwarf galaxy that the Milky Way cannibalized billions of years ago. We stripped off its outer stars and left this dense, massive nucleus behind.

It contains millions of stars. Naked eye? It looks like a fuzzy tennis ball. Through a telescope, it fills the entire view. It’s overwhelming. You lose your sense of perspective because there is no black space left in the eyepiece—just stars upon stars. If you ever take a trip to Hawaii or the Caribbean, bring binoculars just for this.

How does M22 compare when the summer nights get hot?

While everyone is fighting to see Omega Centauri low in the muck, there is another champion sitting in the constellation Sagittarius.

Meet Messier 22 (M22).

I’m going to go on record here: I prefer M22 to M13. There, I said it. M13 gets all the press, but M22 has personality. It’s located just to the left of the “lid” of the Teapot asterism in Sagittarius.

The reason M22 rocks is its position. It sits right in front of the dense star clouds of the Milky Way. You aren’t just looking at a cluster in empty space; you are looking at a cluster superimposed over a curtain of distant stars. It gives the view a 3D effect that is hard to describe until you see it.

It’s an elliptical shape, not a perfect sphere, and it resolves into stars very easily because it’s relatively close to us (about 10,000 light-years). When finding it, use the star Kaus Borealis—the top of the teapot lid. Hop slightly to the left and up. It’s bright enough that you might even catch it without optics in a really dark sky.

Can we find these clusters when the winter chill sets in?

So, summer ends. The galactic center dips below the horizon. The nights get long and brutally cold. Does the show end?

Mostly, yes. But not entirely.

The winter sky is dominated by the spiral arms of our galaxy, looking outward. Globular clusters hang out near the center. That means winter pickings are slim. However, there is a lonely wanderer called Messier 79 (M79).

You find M79 in the constellation Lepus, the Hare. Most people ignore Lepus because it’s hiding under the feet of the mighty Orion. Everyone looks at the Orion Nebula and ignores the rabbit. But if you trace a line through the main body stars of the Hare and go south, you bump into M79.

It feels different than the summer clusters. It’s small, dense, and feels incredibly distant. And it is—it’s about 40,000 light-years away. It’s likely an immigrant, a cluster we stole from the Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy. Seeing it on a freezing January night feels solitary. It’s a faint beacon in a cold, dark ocean. It’s not the most spectacular object, but finding it feels like uncovering a secret.

How do seasoned astronomers actually locate these faint fuzzies?

Okay, you have your chart. You know where M13 should be. But looking at a chart and pointing a long metal tube at the sky are two different things.

You can buy a “GoTo” telescope—the ones with the little computers that hum and whir and point themselves. But I think that robs you of the fun. The thrill is in the hunt. We use a technique called “star-hopping.”

Think of it like giving directions. “Start at the bright red star. Go past the two medium stars. Turn left at the triangle.”

You find a bright star you can see with your naked eye. You center it in your finder scope. Then you consult your chart and find a pattern of dimmer stars that leads toward your target. You move the telescope, hopping from pattern to pattern. It takes practice. You will get lost. You will curse at the sky. But when you finally land on the target, the satisfaction is unmatched.

Why is a Telrad finder my favorite tool?

If star-hopping sounds hard, spend forty bucks on a Telrad. It’s a zero-magnification finder that projects a red bullseye on a glass window.

You look through it, and you see the actual sky with a red target floating on it. No upside-down images. No magnification confusing you. You just move the telescope until the bullseye is where the chart says the cluster is. It turns a ten-minute frustration into a ten-second success. I put one on every telescope I own.

What if my view looks like a gray smudge?

This is the moment of truth. You bought the scope. You drove to a field. You found the spot. You look in the eyepiece and…

“Is that it? It looks like a thumbprint on the lens.”

Relax. That’s normal. Your eyes aren’t broken. You just haven’t switched to “night mode” yet. Our eyes have two sensors: cones (color/detail/center) and rods (black & white/motion/peripheral). The cones are useless in the dark. You need the rods.

You need to use Averted Vision.

This is the Jedi mind trick of astronomy. Do not look directly at the cluster. Look at a star at the edge of your field of view. By looking away, you cast the image of the cluster onto the rod cells in your retina, which are much more sensitive to light.

Suddenly, the “smudge” brightens. You might see granular details flickering in and out. The moment you look back directly at it, it dims again. It’s weird. It feels unnatural. But it works. Practice looking sideways; it’s the difference between seeing a blur and seeing a cluster.

Does light pollution ruin the hunt completely?

I live in the suburbs. My neighbor has a floodlight that rivals the sun. I know the pain of light pollution.

The sad truth? Light pollution murders galaxies. It wipes out nebulae. But globular clusters? They fight back.

Because these clusters are dense balls of light, they have high contrast. You can cut through the soup of city skyglow and still spot them. M13 is visible from a driveway in a moderate city. M4 can be found even with streetlights around.

However, you pay a tax. From the city, you only see the bright core. The faint outer stars—the ones that give it that beautiful “sprinkled sugar” look—get washed out. The cluster looks smaller and punchier, less delicate.

If you can, drive twenty minutes. Just twenty. Get away from the direct glare of downtown. The difference isn’t linear; it’s exponential. A mediocre gray blob in the city becomes a sparkling pile of diamonds from a dark country road. It is worth the gas money.

A final word on patience

You can memorize every star chart in the world. You can buy a telescope that costs as much as a Honda Civic. But the most important tool you have is between your ears.

Patience.

Astronomy is a slow hobby. Your eyes need at least twenty minutes to chemically adapt to the dark. That means no checking your phone. No white flashlights. Just you and the dark. The longer you stare at a globular cluster, the more your brain learns to process the image. You start to see chains of stars you missed a minute ago. You notice the varying brightness. The object stops being a static picture and becomes a real place.

So, go outside. Look up. Find that Keystone in Hercules. The oldest inhabitants of our galaxy are waiting to say hello.

For a deeper dive into what’s visible in your specific location tonight, I highly recommend checking out NASA’s Skywatching Guide. It’s a solid resource for double-checking your targets before you head out into the cold.

FAQs – Where to Find Globular Clusters