On May 20th, a supernova was detected in M100 and on the night of the 21st it was clear in Virginia though wildfire smoke had a major negative effect on transparency. I didn’t think it would be a good night for trying to do detailed, faint imaging but when someone suggested the supernova I thought…
Tag: RGB image
Coma Cluster (RGB)
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…
Messier 92 (RGB)
This is the globular cluster in Hercules that isn’t M13. Actually to be fair, there are others but this is the only other globular in the Messier catalog that is in Hercules. This one gets a lot less attention from amateurs than its more famous cousin but it is still worth a peek. The cluster…
Needle Galaxy (RGB)
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…
NGC 188 (RGB)
NGC 188 is an open cluster in Cepheus. It is about 5,000 light years away and a bit further from the center of the galaxy than we are. It’s also above the disc of the galaxy. What makes NGC 188 unusual is that is an ancient cluster. It is 6.8 billion years old where most…
Messier 53 (RGB)
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….