Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Coma Berenices (Com)  ·  Contains:  IC 3943  ·  IC 3946  ·  IC 3947  ·  IC 3949  ·  IC 3955  ·  IC 3957  ·  IC 3960  ·  IC 3963  ·  IC 3973  ·  IC 3976  ·  IC 3998  ·  IC 4012  ·  IC 4021  ·  IC 4026  ·  IC 4030  ·  IC 4033  ·  IC 4040  ·  IC 4041  ·  IC 4042  ·  IC 4044  ·  IC 4045  ·  IC 4051  ·  IC 4106  ·  IC 4111  ·  IC 839  ·  NGC 4824  ·  NGC 4828  ·  NGC 4839  ·  NGC 4840  ·  NGC 4841  ·  And 457 more.
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The Coma galaxy cluster, Abell 1656, Francesco Meschia
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The Coma galaxy cluster, Abell 1656

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The Coma galaxy cluster, Abell 1656, Francesco Meschia
Powered byPixInsight

The Coma galaxy cluster, Abell 1656

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Description

Abell 1656 is a large cluster of galaxies found in the direction of the constellation Coma Berenices, at over 300 million light years from us. It is known to have over 1000 galaxies in it, about 500 of which are visible in this image.

This cluster is well known for being the first one to which Fritz Zwicky applied, in 1933, the virial theorem, finding that the visible matter wasn’t enough to explain for the velocities being observed, and ushering in the idea of some invisible "dark matter", necessary to explain the observed gravitational effects.

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