Globular clusters are more less all the same – bunch of a few hundreds thousands stars packed in a sphere of 50-150 light years diameter, so pretty dense. If we live in a system placed in a globular cluster we would have nice night view with many bright stars, some of them as bright as our Moon. But then no deep sky objects visible due to light pollution 🙂 Anyway, according to scientists life would not develop at globular clusters due to large and heavy interactions between stars. M5 globular cluster is classic example of all these features.
Messier 5 is one of the largest known globular clusters. It has diameter of 165 light years, so it is the same league like Omega Centauri and M13. You will find this cluster in Serpens (the Serpent) next to 5 magnitude star 5 Ser. Under excellent conditions you should be able to see this cluster with unaided eye. It has total brightness about 5.7mag, and apparent diameter above 20 arc minutes. 5 Ser star is actually double star with second component at magnitude 10mag and with separation about 10 arc seconds. You should be able to separate them with 3-4 inches refractor.
I made picture below of M5 globular cluster at the end of the May, 2017 at my backyard. With TS 130/910 refractor on EQ6 mount. Luminance is 25×3 minutes with QHY163M camera, color was collected with QHY163C camera – it is 12×3 minutes. Conditions average to good.
Large version here https://astrojolo.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/2017-05-28-M5.jpg
Clear skies!
