Most of the astronomy amateurs are probably familiar with the Messier 106 galaxy. This object has no fancy nickname, but M106 is large and rich in features, so it is a very good target for visual observations and astrophotography.
But next to M106, there is a distant galaxy cluster Zwicky 5032 – this name is probably not known at all, because the Zwicky Catalogue of galaxies and of clusters of galaxies is not anything popular among astronomy amateurs. Fritz Zwicky was a Swiss astronomer who worked most of his life at the California Institute of Technology. He was the first (in 1933) to postulate the existence of unseen dark matter. From 1961 to 1968, he and his colleagues published a six-volume Catalogue of galaxies and of clusters of galaxies. They are now available for free at the Caltech page https://authors.library.caltech.edu/records/0b7jq-n3r87
The image above shows the M106 galaxy with a few smaller neighbors. But when you enlarge the image, you will spot several yellowish faint fuzzies right from the M106 galaxy – this is the Zwicky 5032 galaxy cluster. The original plate from the printed catalogue is below – the 5032 cluster is marked there with number 5. It was described there as “medium compact, extremely distant” with a population of 87 galaxies and a diameter of 1.1cm (this is the diameter on the original plate, of course 🙂 )
Today, if you look for galaxy clusters from the Zwicky catalogue, you do not need to read this publication. The online version of the catalog is available here https://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/VizieR?-source=VII/4, and you can also install it in planetarium software, like Cartes du Ciel, for example.
Not so far away from M106 and Zwicky 5032, there is the NGC4127 galaxy, which is often captured in the same field of view as M106. This is an edge-on spiral galaxy that lies approximately 60 million light-years from us. M106, for comparison, is “only” 24 million light-years away. NGC 4217 is seen almost perfectly edge-on and is a perfect candidate for studying dust structures – patterns of dust and gas on both sides of the galaxy plane. The image from the modest 130mm refractor is maybe not very spectacular, but still, some interesting features were recorded.
You will find a lot of information about M106 on the web. This intermediate spiral galaxy contains an active nucleus (Seyfert type 2) and also a supermassive black hole. The mass of this central area is estimated at 40 million solar masses. The striking feature of M106 is the presence of an extra set of spiral arms. These two extra arms are made up of hot gas rather than stars. M106 can be spotted with a small telescope or larger binoculars already, but a larger instrument is required to resolve any detail.
The image below is the whole frame captured with a TS Photoline 130mm diameter refractor and a QHY268M camera. Cropped images in this entry are taken from the image below at 100% magnification, which corresponds to a 1.07″/px scale. Despite the modest suburban sky with 19.5 mag/arcsec2 background brightness, a significant amount of data was captured. The limiting magnitude is about 23 mag. This is due to the long total exposure time and a very sensitive monochromatic camera.
Image technical data: Date: April 2025 Location: Nieborowice, Poland Telescope: TS Photoline 130/910 Corrector: TS FF/FR 0.8x Camera: QHY268M Mount: EQ6 Guiding: ASI290MM + Evoguide ED50 Exposures: LRGB 480:80:60:80 minutes Conditions: Bortle 6, transparency and seeing medium-good
Super fotka 🙂 Jest na liście nowym sprzętem 🙂