Yesterday when I processed and posted the open cluster Messier 44, I noticed I had captured a faint galaxy in the background. So while the stars in the open cluster are within our galaxy at a distance of 577 light years, that faint galaxy UGC 4526 is located at 200 million light years away. Therefore the photons captured by my 80mm telescope lens in my backyard and counted by my Canon camera exited the stars within that galaxy at the start of the Jurassic period when dinosaurs just became the dominant vertebrate on land. The light travelled 1,903,000,000,000,000,000,000 km to land on the camera sensor where each pixel is no bigger than 5.7micro-meter. Pretty mind-blowing when one thinks about it!
Magnitude 14 Galaxy UGC 4526 in M44
Benoit Guertin
