Monday 4th to Sunday 10th April 2022
Back in February, I mentioned an open star cluster called Melotte 111 that is located in the constellation of Coma Berenices, between the constellations of Bootes and Leo. It is visible in the late evening towards the south east and the month of April is an ideal time as Coma Berenices reaches its highest point in the night sky.
To the left of Melotte 111 is an area of sky originally given the wonderful-sounding name "The Realm of Galaxies". It is now more-commonly known as the Coma Galaxy Cluster. The centre of the cluster is some 320 million light years away from us and the galaxies in it are moving away from us at a speed of 15 million miles per hour.
A dark sky location and medium-size telescope will enable you to see some of the 10,000 galaxies located in that area. There is a mixture of spiral galaxies like our own Milky Way and elliptical galaxies that are formed when two galaxies merge together. The galaxies are listed in catalogues such as the NGC "New General Catalogue" and IC "Index catalogue" rather than the more familiar Messier Catalogue as Charles Messier didn't discover them!
The American astronomer Edwin Hubble studied galaxies in depth and came up with a classification system for all the different types. I have included a copy of what is known as his "Tuning Fork" diagram. Our Milky Way is actually a barred spiral galaxy which is given a Hubble classification of SB.
If Hubble's name sounds familiar - that's because the Hubble Space Telescope was named in his honour.
Screenshots courtesy of Stellarium
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