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  • Ville Puoskari

Markarian's chain

The Virgo galaxy cluster is located 60 million light-years away in the constellation of Virgo. It spans over 8 degrees across the sky and consists of over 1300 member galaxies. This particular area is a small part of it known as the Markarian's chain - named after Armenian astrophysicist Benjamin Markarian after he discovered that this string of galaxies moves with a common motion.

The cluster doesnt completely fit in the image nor is my telescope large enough to get all of the faintest fuzzies visible but still I managed to get atleast ~200 galaxies annotated in the photo. Some of them arent annotated so I think there could be way more in there, especially in the background. Many of them are peculiar looking and very faint - all the way down to magnitude 20. Here is some picks that I find intresting.

I also annotated the full resolution image, feel free to zoom in!


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