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A galactic veil

Overall Photons: Elisa Cuccu/Andrea Iorio/Fernando Linsalata/Giampiero Lilli/Roberto Volpini/Gianni Melis/Roberto Testi/Stephane Moinard/José Manuel López Arlandis/Michele Mazzola/Vitali Pelenjow/Leonardo Pelosi/Patrick Bisaillon/Aidan Guerra/Jeff Ratino/George William Hoffman/Vasile Unguru/Vakhtang Khutsishvili/Jonathan Schwab

Lying 240 million light-years away, the members of the Perseus Galaxy Cluster shimmer in this deep-field portrait, mingling with delicate foreground wisps of hydrogen and galactic cirrus in the Milky Way. This composite represents 392 hours of total exposure time (roughly split between Hα and LRGB) captured by 19 astrophotographers using telescopes ranging from 2.7 to 11 inches in aperture.