Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul Haese
I have been collecting data on this target for what seems like an eternity.
Ha 34 x 30 minutes = 17 hours
Red 16 x 20 minutes = 5.333 hours
Green 14 x 20 minutes = 4.666 hours
Blue 16 x 20 minutes. = 5.333 hours
Of note is the reddish background to the right of the image.
What I really like about the image is the amount of galaxies captured within the field.
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Gday Paul,
As mike said, a lot of amateur exposures just begin to pickup faint light
in between the galaxies of a galaxy cluster.
This light is
probably not coming from anything unusual (such as glowing embers, or burning copies of the Astrophysical Journal, or weird atomic particles)....most studies find that the intracluster light in Galaxy Clusters comes from stars in the extremely-extended halos of the ellipticals or it comes from stars that orbit in the potential of the cluster rather than in the potential of any individual galaxy.
(isolated stars are probably existing that have orbited to the outer parts of galaxy clusters.....these must be the loneliest places in the universe!)
My feeling is that you
are picking up the intracluster (inter-galaxy) light in this galaxy cluster, though it is hard to prove it, as the biggest elliptical galaxy NGC 1399 is so vastly extended.
I am very interested in your Ha data.
The whole point is that there is
not supposed to be much Ha (or extremely little Ha) emission in the central parts of the Fornax Cluster near the big ellipticals;
however, given that Ha emitting streamers were discovered
in between some of the Virgo Cluster galaxies, it would be worth checking the Ha frame to see if there is anything unusual there.
Thanks for your big imaging effort on the Fornax cluster, as it is very much "our" nearby major cluster in the southern hemisphere; it is still much less understood than the Virgo Cluster, which the "northies" have extensively characterized.
best regards,
Robert