Messier 3 and a Myriad of Background Galaxies

[Spongey]

I am consistently blown away by what is seen in the backgrounds of my images. 

What started as a two night fun project developed into a string of clear nights and more integration time than I had ever planned to capture on this globular! As a result, the detail observed in the background of this image is stunning, with countless galaxies littering the scene. One of these is NGC designated, 278 are PGC, and many, many more are uncatalogued. I initially thought that I could see a PN inside M3 at the 7 o'clock position, but some Ha data from a friend and deep survey scouring confirmed this to be a highly redshifted galaxy cluster. Several other very faint high-z galaxy clusters are also visible throughout the image.

As an RGB only image, minute backfocus errors in my setup are showing their flaws as lateral chromatic aberration, but I'm still pleased with the image as a whole. 

I say this every time but I'd highly recommend panning around this one at 100%!

Cheers