Inside the Coma Cluster of Galaxies
			
		
		
		
			Almost every object in the above photograph is a galaxy. 
The Coma Cluster of Galaxies 
pictured above 
is one of the densest 
clusters known - it contains thousands of 
galaxies. 
Each of these galaxies houses billions of stars - 
just as our own Milky Way Galaxy does. 
Although nearby when compared to most other 
clusters, 
light from the Coma Cluster 
still takes hundreds of millions of years to reach us. 
In fact, the 
Coma Cluster is so big it takes light 
millions of years just to go from one side to the other! 
The above mosaic of images of a small portion of 
Coma was taken in unprecedented detail by the 
Hubble Space Telescope 
to investigate how galaxies in rich clusters form and evolve.  
Most galaxies in Coma and other clusters are 
ellipticals, although some 
imaged here are clearly spirals.   
The spiral galaxy on the upper left of the 
above image can also be found as one of the bluer galaxies on the upper left of 
this wider field image.
In the background thousands of unrelated galaxies are 
visible far across the universe.