Abell 1656 – The Coma Cluster

The Coma Cluster (Abell 1656) is a large cluster of galaxies that contains over 1,000 identified galaxies and with the central part at a distance of 320 million light years. The central region is dominated by two giant elliptical galaxies: NGC 4874 and 4889. Like most clusters, this one produces large amounts of dark matter and hot X-ray emitting gas. The picture below is best viewed at full resolution (just click on the picture)

Abell1656_LRBG_v2

Abell 1656 or the Coma Cluster

Telescope: 16″ f3.75 Dream Scope
Camera: FLI ML16803
Mount: ASA DDM85
Exposure: 8 hours (24x300s L +  3x24x300s RGB)
Acquisition: January – April 2018 – Processing: April 2021
Location: Southern Alps, France

On the cropped picture below there is (to my knowledge) the farthest object I managed to capture so far: QSO [HB89] 1256+280. With a red shift of 2.66, this quasar is at a distance of about 11.3 +/-1 billion light years. When the light of this quasar left its source, the universe was at a young age of 2 bilion years and we still had to wait 7 billion years for our solar system to be born.

Abell1656_LRBG_v2_QSOHB89

3 Replies to “Abell 1656 – The Coma Cluster”

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