The Coma Cluster is a large galaxy cluster in Coma Berenices. The cluster, located at a mean distance of over 300 million light-years, consists of around a thousand galaxies. It's visible in a moderately large telescope. The cluster is important historically as motions in the cluster could not be explained by the calculated visible mass. This realization led to the concept of 'dark matter'.

This image was taken with my modified Canon T2i thru my Stellarview 115. Guiding was with an ED80 mounted side-by-side. I wanted to reduce noise in my DSLR, so obtained/used a DSLR cooler. It was a small hassle to get everything set up, but the unit did the cooling job admirably. Thermal noise was reduced. 5-minute ISO 1600 subs. Hand-picked subs were aligned and stacked using Nebulosity, and processed using Photoshop CS5.

The field of view used to acquire the image is shown on the right.

Clicking the image above will open up a larger (and rotated) version of image.

Enchanted Skies - Astrophotography by Rich Richins (all images copyright, Rich Richins)