Globular cluster
M53 (M53)
In Coma Berenices (Com) • Magnitude 8.3 • 13 arcminutes
Open the free AstroPlanner with M53 pre-selected, scored against your telescope, location, and the live cloud forecast.
One of the more distant Messier globular clusters, sitting about 58,000 light-years from Earth — far out in the Milky Way's outer halo. It orbits our galaxy like a remote satellite city, and contains an unusually large number of "blue straggler" stars for its size.
M53 at a glance
| Catalog IDs | M53, N 5024 |
| Type | Globular cluster |
| Constellation | Coma Berenices (Com) |
| Right ascension | 13h 12m 54s |
| Declination | +18° 10' 12" |
| Apparent magnitude | 8.33 |
| Surface brightness | 12.5 mag/arcsec² |
| Angular size | 13.0 × 13.0 arcmin |
| Max altitude at 45°N | 63° |
| Best imaging months | Jan, Feb, Mar |
How to image M53
M53 sits in the constellation Coma Berenices at right ascension 13h 12m 54s and declination +18° 10' 12". To frame and integrate it well, AstroPlanner will compute the optimal moonless window for tonight from your location, the field-of-view fit against your sensor and focal length, the suggested total integration time given your aperture and sky Bortle class, and a cloud-aware schedule that drops it from the plan if your nearest cloud forecast spike overlaps the best altitude window.