ngc 5466 in Boötes - now with more data

[wimvb]

Another star cluster, but this one has a bunch of galaxies in the background.

Ngc 5466 is a globular star cluster in the constellation Boötes. Its distance to earth is approximately 52 000 light years, and its age 13.6 billion years. In 2006 a possible tidal stream was discovered that extends from this cluster towards Ursa Major.

This image represents 3 hours of integration, 15 x 3 minutes exposures per channel in RGB. Telescope: SkyWatcher 190MN; camera: ZWO ASI294MM.

When the weather clears up later this week, I plan to collect more data in order to clean up the background and pull out more detail.

April 12:

The weather has cleared up and I have collected more data, but only 2 hours worth. Nights are getting shorter and shorter up here.

As I wrote before, there are plenty of faint galaxies in the background. The faintest one that I could find information on, has a redshift of 0.44, which puts it at a distance of 6 billion light years. Also interesting in this image is a small QSO next to the brightest star. This galaxy, with designation QSO B1404+286, is classified as a BL Lac object. According to F Massaro et al:

"The most elusive and extreme subclass of active galactic nuclei (AGNs), known as BL Lac objects, shows features that can only be explained as the result of relativistic effects occurring in jets pointing at a small angle with respect to the line of sight."

(F. Massaro et al 2020 ApJL 900 L34)

Edited April 13, 2022 by wimvb
more data