Abell 1656, or the Coma Cluster, is located in Coma Berenices and is a very large cluster of galaxies containing over 1,000 identified galaxies, as well as numerous other objects (see annotated image). This Cluster, along with the Abell 1367, the Leo Cluster, makes up the Coma Supercluster, which gets its name from the constellation in which the clusters are located.
The Coma Cluster is about 320 million light years from Earth. Centrally, two elliptical galaxies NGC 4874 and NGC 4889 (seen slightly to the right of center in the widefield image) dominate the Coma Cluster.
Dark matter is believed to make up about 90% of the Coma Cluster, and was one of the first places where gravitational anomalies indicated areas of mass that were unobserved (dark matter).
Capture Date: 5/4/2024
Equipment
Stellarvue SVX90T with 0.8x reducer (432mm fL)
Guidescope/Cam: SV106 with ASI120mm mini
ASIAir Plus, ASI2600MC, ZWO AM5 mount, ZWO 5-position filter wheel
Filter: Antlia Triband Ultra RGB 7nm filter [10 x 300s = 0:50]
Processed with PixInsight and JPEG generated in Adobe Photoshop.
Greg, you’ve been a busy man behind those camera and telescopes! Great capture of a really interesting galaxy cluster. So many galaxies there it was great to see the annotated image to see just how many there are. Very cool and thanks for sharing it with us along with the scientific discoveries associated with the cluster. I love learning new things. Can’t wait to see the next one.
Best,
Terri
@terri Thanks, Terri! I was amazed when I did the annotation. It's truly unbelievable how many objects are in such a small sliver of space.
I'm trying to catch up on processing. I didn't realize how many images I had to process until I ran through my folders today. I still have at least 10 to do so I can see if they're worth publishing. Lots to do still, but it looks like a good week coming up to do processing (unfortunately).
Greg
