Coma Cluster (Abell 1656) (Joel Shepherd)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Coma Berenices (Com) · Contains: IC 3943 · IC 3946 · IC 3949 · IC 3955 · IC 3973 · IC 4040 · IC 4045 · IC 4051 · NGC 4860 · NGC 4864 · NGC 4865 · NGC 4869 · NGC 4871 · NGC 4873 · NGC 4874 · NGC 4881 · NGC 4883 · NGC 4886 · NGC 4889 · NGC 4895 · NGC 4898 · NGC 4907 · NGC 4908 · NGC 4911 · NGC 4919 · NGC 4921

Coma Cluster (Abell 1656), Joel Shepherd

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Coma Cluster (Abell 1656)

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Coma Cluster (Abell 1656)

The Coma Cluster (Abell 1656) in about 9 hours of RGB with a touch of HA. If it's blurry, it's a galaxy, except for those two blueish blobs: those are annoying stars. While I was preparing this, I learned that the theory of dark matter originated in part from studies of this cluster in the 1930s. If these galaxies are gravitationally bound, which their motion suggests they are, then their luminosity should be roughly two orders of magnitude greater than what it is. In other words, there is a enormous amount of mass unaccounted for in this cluster. The solution? Dark matter!

As a complete amateur, I'm not fond of the dark matter theory, Reminds me of aether from the days of yore: an squishy attempt to explain something that we're fundamentally misunderstanding. But what do I know?

Back on earth, I think I need to do something about my blue filter: it really struggles with halos on bright blue stars. I confess to hacking the diffraction spikes into this image -- my scope is a refractor -- but they did seem to improve the aesthetics a bit.

TEC140 Refractor
The refractors!
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Status	Advanced failed
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	7996550
PixInsight job	WFUOZMYWJHX6XP36Q0P0M4VMISFTRMHH
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	PLATE_SOLVING_IMAGE

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Coma Cluster (Abell 1656)

Coma Cluster (Abell 1656)

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Coma Cluster (Abell 1656)

Coma Cluster (Abell 1656)

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