The Coma Cluster contains more than 1000 galaxies, and I can identify 275 of these in my image. Not bad from the centre of a city!

There’s some interesting history to the Coma Cluster. Back in 1933, it was observed that the galaxies were moving faster than could be accounted for by their mutual force of gravity alone. It was suggested that mysterious “dark matter” — something that couldn’t be directly seen, but its effects observed — may be responsible. Nowadays we think that around 90% of the Coma Cluster’s mass is dark matter.

Here are the main galaxies that I managed to capture:

NGC 4907 is a barred spiral galaxy. You can definitely see its shape in the picture.

NGC 4895 is a lenticular galaxy, meaning it’s a large disc but with no spiral arms.

NGC 4848 was stripped of most of its gas as it passed through the Coma Cluster.

NGC 4921 is one of the few spiral galaxies in this region. It has unusually low rates of star formation.

NGC 4889 is a supergiant elliptical galaxy with a supermassive black hole at the centre. Gas and dust falling in are generating heat through friction.

NGC 4911 is a spiral galaxy that’s being warped out of shape due to the gravity of other nearby galaxies.

NGC 4874 is a supergiant elliptical galaxy surrounded by a giant halo of stars up to a million light-years across.

And as for the two large circular objects… well they’re stars much closer than the galaxies, just coincidentally along our line of sight.