Virgo's Galactic Chain

[Andy Elliott]

Markarian's Chain, a stretch of galaxies found in the constellation of Virgo, which viewed from Earth lie along a smoothly curved line. Charles Messier first discovered the two brightest of the galaxies, M84 and M86, in 1781. Just to the left of centre can be seen a pair of interacting galaxies, NGC 4438 and NGC 4435, which about 50 million light-years away, and sometimes referred to as ‘Markarian's Eyes’. It's amazing to think that Markarian’s chain lies in a galaxy rich region of the sky (the Virgo cluster), which may contain up to 2000 galaxies!

 

[AlanLichty]

Fascinating stuff. Hard for me to wrap my feeble brain around some of the numbers that get tossed around describing what all is out there.

 

[JimFox]

Wow Andy, I have never heard of this referred to as Virgo's Galactic Chain, but I really like it!

And I have to say, this looks so great! It really puts my efforts to capture this a few months back in perspective. I need to get back to this one and see if I can up my game. You have set a high standard.

 

[Andy Elliott]

Thanks Jim. I just had this image in my head of Virgo adorned in this galactic wonder. Is that weird?

 

[JimFox]

Thanks Jim. I just had this image in my head of Virgo adorned in this galactic wonder. Is that weird?

Ha ha.... perhaps a bit weird.... but you know a creative vision leads to creative photography!

 

[Mike Lewis]

Great stuff - this is such a mind bending area of the sky, so many galaxies visible in one image.

ML