The Fath in Abell 262

This was a surprise finding for me. The Fath is a cluster of Galaxies near NGC703-710 located at the heart of Abell 262. After 3 nights of failing to achieve even a basic polar alignment with my new mount, and after 90 minutes of effort last night I was finally successful and able to take CCD images. At the end of the evening (around 2am) I decided to shoot NGC705 since it was not a long slew and I had not seen it before. To my amazement, NGC705 turned out to be one of the Fath galaxies and I was imaging at around 250 Million Light Years distance.

The size of these images is larger that prior Abell galaxy clusters. These images were taken with my newest, heavy platform and are by default almost three times the magnification. Equipment analysis.

I am finding that references to distances at this level (inside the Abell catalog world) are becoming scarce to find and less relevant. The difference between a cluster at 250MLY or 600MLY doesn’t matter very much. I won’t be able to get to either one.

October 12, 2005