Abell 1656 galaxy cluster

[Martin Meredith]

Years pass without a single Abell 1656 and suddenly two come along at once  (Nytecam, if you're reading, that's a very impressive 10s shot on another forum ). I was also viewing it last night although mine is a 60s capture. 

I started marking some of the cluster members but stopped when I reached 50. The names (N=NGC, P = PGC) and magnitudes are indicated for a representative sample. This is an amazing part of the sky, just swimming in galaxies. You could spend hours studying this region and I hope to return to it from a darker site in equatorial mode at some point in the future. There are tons more in the range 16-18mag and presumably beyond.

I really must clean that sensor...

Martin

[nytecam]

Very nice result Martin on this huge and dense gx cluster in Coma - that's amazing for 80mm aperture     As you say I've been there recently in 10s exp via the new fast Lodestar-Mx2 mono cam as below and negaitve annotated version too - Paul's LodestarLive is a dream to use

[nytecam]

Here's my large 4-pane mosaic of Abell GC 1656

[Martin Meredith]

For these large clusters we're going to need live stitching!

I'm seriously impressed that you can capture the faint 'halo' of galaxies surrounding NGC 4874 in 10s. I noticed a few of them during the capture, looking for all the world as if they're in orbit around NGC 4874 (which I suppose in a sense they are). This is a fascinating field in all senses.

Re marking them up, I see you're using Megastar/DSS. I usually start out with SkySafari as it is so convenient and easy to use (especially at the scope to ensure I'm centred on the right field), but I've noticed it misses out some of the objects. Last night I spotted a really nice equilateral triangle of stars in the NGC 5350 group that just didn't appear at all in SkySafari although I had it set to show down to 18th mag (and these were nearer 12-13th mag stars I reckon). I need to cross-ref with something deeper/more reliable.

Martin

[Paul81]

I agree it is amazing just how many truly faint objects can be captured in such a short time. Superb! 

I realised the other day the way in which my transformation code works for live stacking means that live mosaicing should not be too difficult to add in at a later date. I think given the small FoV of the Lodestar's sensor this could be quite handy... Something for the future hit list!