Markarians Chain of Galaxies (part of)

[RobertM]

This is an image of part of the famous chain of galaxies in the constellation of Virgo (my favourite constellation but then it would be !) and part of the Virgo Galaxy Cluster.  It is also interestingly located in the center of our local SuperCluster.

The dominant two galaxies in this group are the giant eliptical galaxies M84 and M86, none of the others have Messier designations.  The other well known paring is of NGC4438 and NGC4435, also known as The Eyes.

19 * 10 mins sub exposures of luminance through a Sky90 refractor @f4.5 but it needs many more subs !

[MarkS]

Robert,

That's looking very good.  It's very deep and nicely processed.  There's an unbelievable number of galaxies in that image!  I think it's the best I've seen of Makarian's Chain.

Mark

[RobertM]

Thanks Mark, Still not a patch on your M51 but here's a slightly less anaemic LLRGB version.  I Hugely underestimated the quality of RGB data that was required but needed more time, I'm very pleased with the result none the less.

[Daniel]

Wow, awesome stuff, so many galaxys and so much detail

Great stuff

Daniel
:O)

[JohnP]

Very nice indeed Robert - You have captured a lot of detail in the galaxies which is excellent. You'll have to do a galaxy count sometime I am sure this will take the OAS record for the most number of galaxies in an image...

John

[Fay]

Lovely image, Robert, you do it so well!!

[Fay]

Was this a Kelling image, Robert?

[RobertM]

Yes Fay

[Mike]

What's that weird thing that looks like a prawn at top center?

[RobertM]

That's IC3355 (Mag 15.2), hadn't noticed before it does rather look like a prawn.