Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Coma Berenices (Com)  ·  Contains:  IC 3943  ·  IC 3946  ·  IC 3947  ·  IC 3949  ·  IC 3955  ·  IC 3957  ·  IC 3959  ·  IC 3960  ·  IC 3963  ·  IC 3968  ·  IC 3973  ·  IC 3976  ·  IC 3998  ·  IC 4011  ·  IC 4012  ·  IC 4021  ·  IC 4026  ·  IC 4030  ·  IC 4033  ·  IC 4040  ·  IC 4041  ·  IC 4042  ·  IC 4044  ·  IC 4045  ·  IC 4051  ·  IC 839  ·  NGC 4848  ·  NGC 4850  ·  NGC 4851  ·  NGC 4854  ·  And 28 more.
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Abell 1656, Frederick Steiling
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Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
Abell 1656, Frederick Steiling
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Description

This image tells so many stories that it leaves me nearly speechless. There are roughly 1,000 galaxies identified in the Coma Cluster, a great handful of which I've been fortunate enough to have exposed here. At an average distance of 321 million light years from us, this is the most distant set of objects I've targeted.

While the cluster is dominated by diffuse elliptical galaxies, there are a few barred spirals in there that really add some spice to the soup. NGC4921 (13.0 magnitude), NGC4911 (12.8 magnitude), and NGC4907 (13.4 magnitude) in particular are the real surprises for me in this image, each of which show some real definition, including the bar.

The treats don't end there: I've nabbed my first Quasar as well! QSO HB89 [1256+280] is a 21.0 magnitude object that is 10.8 billion light years away.... which means the light I captured for this image was released 6 billion years before the earth was even around!

This stuff is why I image!

More info: https://fuzzy.photos/astrophotos/25-abell-1656-the-coma-cluster

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Abell 1656, Frederick Steiling