The Coma Cluster is a very large cluster of galaxies in Coma Bereneces. The center of the cluster contains two supergiant eliptical galaxies, NGC 4874 and NGC 4889 but the entire cluster consists of over 1,000 galaxies. The average distance of the galaxies in the cluster is 321 million light years though being a huge…
Category: coma berenices
Coma Berenices (Berenice’s hair) is a northern constellation well placed for spring viewing.
Messier 99
Messier 99 is a grand design spiral galaxy in Coma Berenices. Unlike our Milky Way, it does not have a bar structure across the center. It is about 45 million light years away and is part of the large Virgo Cluster of galaxies Its apparent size is fairly small, only around 5 arc minutes in…
Needle Galaxy
The Needle Galaxy (NGC 4565) is an edge-on spiral galaxy in Coma Berenices. According to Wikipedia it is 30 to 50 million light years away The smaller galaxy to the upper left might be a satellite galaxy or just a more distant background galaxy. It isn’t obvious from the image and the reference material I…
Messier 53
It’s been said that if you have seen one globular cluster you have seen them all. There’s a bit of truth to that. Some are denser and some are sparser but they generally look pretty much like this. This particular cluster, M53, is about 58,000 light years away from us in the constellation Coma Berenices….
Whale and HockeyStick Galaxies
The Whale Galaxy (top right) is a barred spiral galaxy seen edge on. It has a catalog number of NGC 4631. Just above it is the dwarf elliptical galaxy NGC 4627. They are about 30 million light years away. The Hockey Stick Galaxy also known as the Crowbar Galaxy has two NGC numbers, 4656 and…
Linda's Astronomy Adventures 