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The Corona Borealis Galaxy Cluster

A visual observation of Abell 2065

 

 April 2007

Spring is  galaxy season!  Instead of surfing the Virgo Cluster, we have tackled last night under very good conditions (1200 m in the Black Forest with very good transparency and acceptable seeing) the Corona Borealis Galaxy Cluster. The Corona Cluster Abell 2065 (about 1.5 billion LY distant) has this touch of being not a visual target at all. In Burnham's Celestial Handbook it is classified as beyond reach for amateur telescopes. Well, amateur telescopes have changed  and yesterday we set out to see how far we could get.

SDSS

The brightest members of Abell 2065 are mag 16.5. The galaxies are not as super tightly packed as some Hickson groups, but a magnification of 300x was required with my 22" Dob to keep things apart (tracking with an equatorial platform is quite comfortable for things like this). I could see three isolated galaxies with certainty (# 1, 3, and 6 on Steve Gottlieb's page, see below), of which two could be seen steadily with averted vision. With other members, I was not completely sure as faint foreground stars were nearby or the galaxies themselves were to close to each other.

The SDSS image to the left has a size of 15x15 arc minutes.

More information on the Cluster is available on the excellent web pages of Steve Gottlieb and Jim Shields http://www.astronomy-mall.com/Adventures.In.Deep.Space/agc2065.htm

A DSS printout as finder chart (field size approximately 8 arc minutes)

DSS copyright notice

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