This is a wide sweep from Coma Berenices (below) up to Canes Venatici (above) covering the northern section of the "realm of the galaxies" region, covering some 25° of sky from north (at top) to south. At this scale even the largest and brightest galaxies show up only as small smudges, but the field is filled with them! At bottom right is the open star cluster Mel 111, the Coma Berenices star cluster. The bright star at top is Cor Caroli, or Alpha Canum Venaticorum. The red star at the top is La Superba, Y Canum Venaticorum. This is a stack of 18 x 2-minute exposures with the Canon EOS Ra at ISO 1600 and the Samyang 85mm AF lens, on the Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer 2i tracker. Taken from home on a very clear night, April 13, 2021. Stacked and aligned in Photoshop, using Median stack mode to eliminate satellite trails. No darks or LENR applied.
The large star cluster in Coma Berenices known officially as Melotte 111, at right, with two of the most prominent galaxies in Coma at left: NGC 4559 at top and the Needle Galaxy, NGC 4565, at bottom. Several other fainter galaxies are in the field. I shot this April 2, 2021 on a less-then-ideal hazy night as a test of the new SharpStar 94mm EDPH refractor telescope and its matching field flattener/reducer. The high haze added the star glows and accentuated the star colours, so did make for a nice image in the end. And despite the haze, galaxies as faint as 14th magnitude are recorded, such as tiny NGC 4562 below the Needle Galaxy. This is a stack of 10 x 6-minute exposures at ISO 800 with the Canon EOS Ra, autoguided on the Astro-Physics Mach 1 mount with the Lacerta MGEN3 stand-alone autoguided set to dither 5 pixels between each exposure. The field of view is about 3.3° x 5°.
