Dark gecko on starry sand! (and hidden clusters)

[andyc]

OK, a fairly fanciful name for a classic view towards the Galactic Centre, but I like the idea of the little critter scuttling across the sand! There's just an incredible number of stars here, and a couple of hidden treats with globular clusters Djorgovski 2 & 3, as well as NGC6520 and B86. The paper by Bica et al (1994) on NGC6540 (Djorgovski 3) puts the background stars somewhere near 25,000 light-years away (getting close to the galactic centre), and Djorg 3 at 11,500ly distant, so in front, rather than within the main groundmass of stars. It seems surprising that Djorg 2 was only found in 1987 as it appears quite distinctive. NGC6520 and B86 are both somewhere near 6,000ly away, quite a lot closer. The sky was transparent enough that at the same time, Djorg 2 was easily visible as a hazy patch in the 16".

NGC6520 & B86, 100% (http://www.pbase.com/andycasely/image/163337568)
Full frame, 50% (http://www.pbase.com/andycasely/image/163337569)
NGC6540, 100% (http://www.pbase.com/andycasely/image/163337570)
Djorgovski 2, 100% (http://www.pbase.com/andycasely/image/163367759)

26 x 5 minutes, EOS 60D on 200mm f/5 Newtonian. Seeing could've been a wee bit better, and it was pretty windy.

[strongmanmike]

Excellent examination there Andy, enjoyed it :thumbsup: I observed Djorgovski 2 (and the others there) through Alexander Massey's 17.5" Dob at SPSP using a nice wid-ish field eyepiece, really a beautiful field under the transparent and steady perfectly dark skies we enjoyed this year :thumbsup:

Mike

[multiweb]

Awesome. Love those Milkyway shots when the background is just so dense with stars you can't even see the sky. :thumbsup:

[billdan]

Awesome Andy, the stars are so dense they do look like sand.
Tell me how close to the black hole were you ( SagA ?).

Cheers
Bill

[Atmos]

Very nice Andy, as we mostly image targets that aren't in quite so dense environments it can be easy to forget just how many stars are towards the galactic centre!

[RickS]

Nice catch, Andy! I always love those busy, golden fields.

[Ross G]

A beautiful photo Andy!

Ross.

[andyc]

Thanks everyone!
That would've been quite something. Nothing quite like the view through a good big scope under a very clear dark sky :astron:

Yep, it's so different from galaxy views, or even most other Milky Way shots. But it kinda makes colour calibration in PixInsight tricky - there's no black background to use!

Bill, Sgr A* is just 4 degrees away, to the left (west) of this view. If some of these stars really lie at a comparable distance from us as the galactic centre, as indicated in the Bica paper (my feeling is that the uncertainties might lean to the stars being a little nearer us) then they might be as little as 1750 light-years from Sgr A*. They're probably rather further, by virtue of not being the same distance from us as the black hole though!

[Placidus]

Really like the research you did, and the evidence that the globular is actually between us and the background of uncountable orange stars.

(The dark nebula: a side-on silhouette of Mighty Mouse, come to save the day.)

A captivating image.

[andyc]

Thanks Mike & Trish! It's quite fun to learn a bit about the stuff from which you catch photons. Took me a while to see the Mighty Mouse there, but I think I do now :D