Hercules Cluster of Galaxies

The Hercules Cluster (Abell 2151) is a cluster of about 200 galaxies some 500 million light-years distant in the constellation Hercules. One of the coolest aspects of this cluster is that nearly half of its 200-plus members are spirals. And several of those are interacting with other members of the cluster. The cluster is part of the larger Hercules Supercluster, which is itself part of the much larger Great Wall super-structure.

I am showing two images here. The second image is annotated with the identification of the galaxy code and its distance from us. Note that I have not marked every galaxy in this picture. Anything that is not round AND is fuzzy is a galaxy, whereas anything round AND sharp is a star.

Leave a Reply