Dark gecko on starry sand! (and hidden clusters)

[andyc (Andy)]

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%
Full frame, 50%
NGC6540, 100%
Djorgovski 2, 100%

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 (Michael)]

Excellent examination there Andy, enjoyed it 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

Mike

[multiweb (Marc)]

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

[billdan (Bill)]

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 (Colin)]

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 (Rick)]

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

[Ross G]

A beautiful photo Andy!

Ross.

[andyc (Andy)]

Thanks everyone!

Originally Posted by strongmanmike

Excellent examination there Andy, enjoyed it 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

Mike

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

Originally Posted by multiweb

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

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!

Originally Posted by 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

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 (Mike and Trish)]

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 (Andy)]

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