Coma Cluster

This is a Hubble Space Telescope mosaic of a portion of the immense Coma cluster of over 1,000 galaxies, located 300 million light-years from Earth. Hubble's incredible sharpness was used to do a comprehensive census of the cluster's most diminutive members: a whopping 22,426 globular star clusters. Among the earliest homesteaders of the universe, globular star clusters are snow-globe-shaped islands of several hundred thousand ancient stars. The survey found the globular clusters scattered in the space between the galaxies. They have been orphaned from their home galaxies through galaxy tidal interactions within the bustling cluster. Astronomers will use the globular cluster field for mapping the distribution of matter and dark matter in the Coma galaxy cluster.

Name

Coma Cluster

Constellation

Coma Berenices

R.A.

12:59:48.70

Dec.

27:58:50.00

Distance

321,000,000 lys

Dimensions

2,200,000 lys

Release Date

2018-11-29

Instrument

HST > ACS/WFC

Resolution

18,281 x 10,283 px

Entropy

5.87

Sharpness

2.76

NASA & STScI

NASA, ESA, J. Mack (STScI), and J. Madrid (Australian Telescope National Facility)

13,600,000,000

321,000,000

0 log lys

lys

Zoom

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