Hi guys,
Thanks for all your compliments
.
The two main galaxies are NGC 4696 and NGC 4709 and are the only two I was able to discern visually. The cluster consists of two sub groups that turn out to be moving towards each other, the distance of these two clusters is between 110 and 140 million light years. 24 galaxies are brighter than magnitude 14 over a field of 1.5 x 1.5 degrees, and since the field of view of my image is smaller the limiting galaxy magnitude goes quite a bit beyond that.
For more information see:
http://www.sas.org.au/Galaxy%20Chronicles.htm
in chapter (34).
I've found only a few other images by amateurs on the net:
http://users.westconnect.com.au/~sjastro/centc.html
http://kiss-the-sky.com/CentaurusGalaxyCluster.htm
http://www.pcug.org.au/~stevec/ngc4696_ST10.htm
The latter link has a similar field of view and limiting magnitude as my shot and also states the coordinates.
And yes, there are a lot of faint fuzzies that are easily overlooked! I haven't done a serious attempt my self, but it wouldn't surprise me if there are more than 50 in my image.
Terry, thanks for putting these images on pbase!
See you on Astrofest.
Cheers,