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Markarians Chain
About this object
Markarian’s Chain is a group of bright galaxies strung out in a string like fashion near the center of the Virgo cluster of galaxies. It contains 12 or so bright galaxies and many small faint ones. This image is of the main part of Margarin’s chain with the galaxy M84 missing and just below the field of view. Near the center of the image are two interesting galaxies called the “eyes”. NGC 4438 is the larger of the two with the other named NGC 4435. It it thought that NGC 4438’s odd shape is the result of a merger between two galaxies. It is also thought that these two galaxies pasted very close to each other millions of years ago. The resulting flyby stripped many of the stars from NGC 4435 leaving the oval core. Within this image there are over 100 galaxies easily seen. The annotated image lists the ones cataloged.
This image was taken at the 2017 Winter Star Party and is the result of 15hrs of exposure time through Red, Green and Blue filters.
Markarian’s Chain is a group of bright galaxies strung out in a string like fashion near the center of the Virgo cluster of galaxies. It contains 12 or so bright galaxies and many small faint ones. This image is of the main part of Margarin’s chain with the galaxy M84 missing and just below the field of view. Near the center of the image are two interesting galaxies called the “eyes”. NGC 4438 is the larger of the two with the other named NGC 4435. It it thought that NGC 4438’s odd shape is the result of a merger between two galaxies. It is also thought that these two galaxies pasted very close to each other millions of years ago. The resulting flyby stripped many of the stars from NGC 4435 leaving the oval core. Within this image there are over 100 galaxies easily seen. The annotated image lists the ones cataloged.
This image was taken at the 2017 Winter Star Party and is the result of 15hrs of exposure time through Red, Green and Blue filters.
Image Details
- Optics : Stellarvue SVS 130 refractor
- Mount: Paramount MYT
- Camera: QSI 583
- Filters: Astrodon
- Exposure: RGB: 300:300:300 Bin 1x1
- Camera/Mount Control: The Sky X, CCD Auto Pilot 5
- Guiding: Lodestar
- Processing: PixInsight 1.8,
- Location: Winter Star Party, Scout Key FL
- Date: Feb 2017
