Today, I processed one of "those" images... one of those images that I stare at for hours and hours straight... thinking to myself: "I wonder if they see us too?"
The
Coma Galaxy Cluster (Abell 1656) contains over 1.000 galaxies. Each galaxy counts an averaged 100 billion stars (let than number sink in for a while)! The core is about 300 million ly distant and 20 million ly in diameter. The clusters close proximity, combined with the wide variety of evolutionary stages among the galaxies makes it an ideal laboratory for research. It played an important role for understanding the distribution of galaxies. The galaxies are not uniformly distributed over the universe. Instead, they collect into vast clusters of filaments and walls of galaxies, interspersed with large voids in which very few galaxies seem to exist.
The galaxies are crowded together into galaxy clusters > and these clusters are crowded together into galaxy clouds > and these clouds of galaxy clusters are grouped up into super cluster > finally, so called filaments and "walls" (even wider and thicker than filaments) are constructed out of such clusters.
The Coma Cluster partially forms the "Great Wall" (aka "Coma Wall"), which is one of the longest known super structures in the universe (~200 million ly distant and measures 500x300x16 million ly in size).
Even if it's an half-hearted processing and only 6 hours exposure with an 8 inch Newton... This picture with a radius of 0.8°, again shows us the unlimited amount of habitat that is out there. It is definitely not my best picture with respect to framing, colors or details... this picture doesn't show art... it just shows what we can see. And I wonder if they can see us too.
Thanks
@Gary Imm for showing me the mouseover trick
By the way, i recorded the acquisition session:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_wT8AHfMq0 ;-)
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