Abell194 is a rich galaxy cluster in the constellation of Cetus and contains about 100 members,far more than can be been at this photograph.Its distance amount to about 265 mio.light years.

The brightest members are the two gravitationally interacting galxies NGC545 + NGC547,with an apparent magnitude of 13.5mag.Because their distance differs to about 8 mio.light years,they don´t merge physically.

The brightest member,NGC541 (12.2mag) was detected by H.L.d´Arrest in 1864.

Slightly northwest of NGC541 you can see a small blue object,named Minkowski´s object.This is a small dwarf galaxie with a high rate of star formation regions,unusal for such dwarfs.The reason for the immense starburts may be the radio jets of nearby NGC541,one of which directly points to the blue dwarf.

Another radio source is NGC547,but this one doesn´t trigger the starburts in Minkowski´s object.

position of NGC541 (epoch2000):

Rect.:        01h 25m 44,33s

Decl.:        -01° 22′ 46,6″

image data:

LRGB image with L = 30x1200s, RGB = 10x1200s each,a total of 20.0 hours

80cm f/7 AstroOptik Keller corrected cassegrain, FLI Proline 16803 Prompt 7 CTIO/UNC Chile,remote controlled

image processing: Bernd Flach-Wilken

 here you see the complete field of view of the FLI 16803 camera:to get the full resolution,cklick inside the picture

this is a inverted labeled version:

 a more detailed view to Minkowski´s object: