Abell 1656 - Massive Galaxy Cluster in Coma Berencies

[iksose7]

Got a 3 night stretch of clear nights at the start of this week which i decided to spend pointed at this galaxy cluster. Not a very interesting image to look at but certainly mind blowing to think about. Imaging this patch of sky was the perfect excuse to figure out the Pixinsight annotation script, i have included the result, crazy amount of fuzzies hanging around! Hope ya'll enjoy.

And some info for those into that sort of thing:

Abell 1656 also known as the Coma Cluster is a group of around 1000 galaxies found in the spring constellation Coma Berencies. Along with Abell 1376 it is one of two major galaxy clusters making up the Coma Supercluster. Most points of light in this image are in fact galaxies not stars, most of them either dwarf or giant ellipticals, each made up of millions or billions of solar masses. Towards the center are the two giant elliptical galaxies NGC 4874 and 4889. 

This is the furthest group of objects i have imaged at 321 million light years in distance. To put that into perspective, the light that hit my camera to make this image left the cluster when reptiles first started to evolve from amphibians. This is what this galaxy cluster looked like before dinosaurs roamed the Earth. To see what it looks like right now someone would need to take a picture of it again in another 321 million years.

Exposure Details:

88* 600 sec, f7, ISO 800

Total Exposure: 14.6 hours

Scope: Altair Astro 115EDT

Camera: Canon 600Da

Mount: NEQ6

[tingting44]

wow very nice! and love the info about the details, a job done nice

do you know of any PI tutorials out for the annotation script? i cant find anything

[toxic]

very very nice image

[Moonshane]

amazing images. your own hubble deep sky

[laser_jock99]

Cool stuff- the scale of the Universe!

[Big Jim Slade]

Fabulous!

[Mr Spock]

Amazing number of galaxies and a great image too.

[laudropb]

Wow. Totally amazing image and mind blowing facts. Thanks

[bluedandelion]

Very nice image. Well done, Callum.

Ajay

[lukebl]

Very nice indeed. And with a DSLR too!

[johnrt]

What a field of view! I'm on the iPad at the moment, I need to go and fire up the desktop computer and have a look on a full size monitor to do this justice.

[iksose7]

Cheers folks, glad ya like it.

I didnt realize how many galaxies were actually in this image until i ran the annotation script, its crazy. It made building the star mask in PI a very long process!

Callum

[MattJenko]

Epic.

[Chris]

+1 for Epic.

[dph1nm]

I think you picked up the plume!

http://gregg.physics.ucdavis.edu/gregg/coma/coma.html

NigelM

[iksose7]

I think you picked up the plume!

http://gregg.physics.ucdavis.edu/gregg/coma/coma.html

NigelM

I had noticed that feature, especially in a more stretched version of this image but had no idea what it was and completely forgot to point it out in my post, thanks for the link Nigel!

For those interested, if you look hard enough there is a bridge like structure moving up from the left hand side of NGC 4874, apparently it is is 500,000 light years long!

Callum