farlightteam
Virgo cluster with NGC4435-NGC4438
Technical data:
Remote Observatory "FarLightTeam"
Team: Marc Valero, José Esteban, Jesús M. Vargas, Bittor Zabalegui.
Telescope: Takahashi FSQ106 ED 530mm f/5
CCDs: QSI683 wsg8
Filters: Baader Planetarium - LRGB
Mount: 10Micron GM1000 HPS
Imaging Software: Voyager
Processing Software: PixInsight-AstroPixelProcessor
Imaging Data:
Captured Between February 1 to April 30, 2022 in 6 sessions due to bad weather.
( Fregenal de la Sierra ) Badajoz, Spain.
Hosting "E-EYE Entre Encinas y Estrellas"
Image composed of:
Luminance 54 x 900" .....13,5 hours
RGB 28x300" on each channel ..... 7 hours
Total ....20,5 hours
Darks, flats, bias
Technical explanation of objects :
The Virgo cluster is a cluster of galaxies located approximately 59 ± 4 million light-years away in the direction of the constellation Virgo. It contains some 1,300 known galaxies, although there may be as many as 2,000, and forms the central region of the Local Supercluster, in which the Local Group is also found. Its mass is estimated to be 1.2×1015 MS up to about 8 degrees from the center of the cluster, which is equivalent to a radius of about 2.2 Mpc.3
Many of the bright galaxies in this cluster, including the giant elliptical galaxy Messier 87, were discovered in the late 1770s and early 1780s and later included in Charles Messier's catalogue. Described by Messier as starless nebulae, their true nature would not be discovered until the 1920s.
The cluster subtends a maximum arc of about 8 degrees centered on the constellation Virgo, and many of its galaxies can be seen with an amateur telescope. Its brightest member is the giant elliptical galaxy M49, but the most notable and famous is the galaxy M87, located in its center.
In the center of the image we show we have NGC 4435 and NGC 4438, also known as the Eye Galaxies or Arp 120, they are two galaxies in the Virgo Cluster, about 52 million light years from our galaxy, also visible with amateur telescopes.
NGC 4435:
NGC 4435 is a barred lenticular galaxy showing a ring of dust around the nucleus. Through studies carried out with the Spitzer telescope, a young stellar population has been detected in its center, which indicates that 190 million years ago it suffered a stellar outbreak perhaps caused by an interaction with NGC 4438, and almost all of its hot gas, according to studies. made in X-rays with the Chandra telescope, is concentrated in its central region. It also seems to have a long tail that was also thought to be produced by this event, but which is actually a system of dust clouds in our galaxy that is totally unrelated to NGC 4435.
NGC 4438:
NGC 4438 is a hard-to-classify galaxy that has been classified as both a spiral galaxy and a lenticular galaxy, which explains its inclusion in Halton C. Arp's Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies. It is one of the most notable galaxies in the cluster due to its highly distorted appearance, which shows that it is undergoing or has undergone gravitational interactions, and for the unknown mechanism that causes its central region to show activity, and that it has expelled opposing gas loops at one the other. A starburst, a black hole, or an active galactic nucleus has been thought of, and all possibilities are under investigation. It also shows a low content of neutral hydrogen, perhaps due to its friction with the hot gas that fills the intergalactic medium of Virgo or with the corona of hot gas that surrounds the nearby galaxy M86 and/or due to having been torn away by gravitational attraction. of some galaxy with which it was about to collide (perhaps M86 itself), in addition to a displacement of the different components of its interstellar medium (neutral hydrogen, molecular hydrogen, hot gas, and interstellar dust, which reaches up to a distance of 4-5 kiloparsecs from its disk) in the direction of NGC 4435 -which tends to be attributed, however, to friction with the aforementioned intergalactic medium-, and finally traces of having undergone several bursts of star formation.
A pair of interacting galaxies?
NGC 4435 and NGC 4438 have been and are considered by numerous authors to be a pair of interacting galaxies, having calculated that the two galaxies came close 100 million years ago to just 16,000 light years from each other. In any case, and despite the strong evidence in favor of an interaction between the two, other scientists have expressed doubts as to whether the two galaxies are actually interacting despite their apparent proximity, since their redshifts are different and NGC 4435 is barely visible. has suffered the effects of such interaction. It has also been speculated that NGC 4438 may actually be two galaxies merging, having nothing to do with NGC 4435, which has interacted in the past with M86 (to which it seems to be joined by filaments of gas and in which it is detected certain amount of interstellar dust and atomic and ionized hydrogen that seems to come from NGC 4438, which reinforces this possibility) causing the peculiarities observed in it, that the three mentioned galaxies have interacted with each other, and even that NGC 4438 may be being torn apart by the gravity (tidal forces) of M87, which is only 58 arcminutes away from it (and seems to have gotten as close as 300 kiloparsecs).
Virgo cluster with NGC4435-NGC4438
Technical data:
Remote Observatory "FarLightTeam"
Team: Marc Valero, José Esteban, Jesús M. Vargas, Bittor Zabalegui.
Telescope: Takahashi FSQ106 ED 530mm f/5
CCDs: QSI683 wsg8
Filters: Baader Planetarium - LRGB
Mount: 10Micron GM1000 HPS
Imaging Software: Voyager
Processing Software: PixInsight-AstroPixelProcessor
Imaging Data:
Captured Between February 1 to April 30, 2022 in 6 sessions due to bad weather.
( Fregenal de la Sierra ) Badajoz, Spain.
Hosting "E-EYE Entre Encinas y Estrellas"
Image composed of:
Luminance 54 x 900" .....13,5 hours
RGB 28x300" on each channel ..... 7 hours
Total ....20,5 hours
Darks, flats, bias
Technical explanation of objects :
The Virgo cluster is a cluster of galaxies located approximately 59 ± 4 million light-years away in the direction of the constellation Virgo. It contains some 1,300 known galaxies, although there may be as many as 2,000, and forms the central region of the Local Supercluster, in which the Local Group is also found. Its mass is estimated to be 1.2×1015 MS up to about 8 degrees from the center of the cluster, which is equivalent to a radius of about 2.2 Mpc.3
Many of the bright galaxies in this cluster, including the giant elliptical galaxy Messier 87, were discovered in the late 1770s and early 1780s and later included in Charles Messier's catalogue. Described by Messier as starless nebulae, their true nature would not be discovered until the 1920s.
The cluster subtends a maximum arc of about 8 degrees centered on the constellation Virgo, and many of its galaxies can be seen with an amateur telescope. Its brightest member is the giant elliptical galaxy M49, but the most notable and famous is the galaxy M87, located in its center.
In the center of the image we show we have NGC 4435 and NGC 4438, also known as the Eye Galaxies or Arp 120, they are two galaxies in the Virgo Cluster, about 52 million light years from our galaxy, also visible with amateur telescopes.
NGC 4435:
NGC 4435 is a barred lenticular galaxy showing a ring of dust around the nucleus. Through studies carried out with the Spitzer telescope, a young stellar population has been detected in its center, which indicates that 190 million years ago it suffered a stellar outbreak perhaps caused by an interaction with NGC 4438, and almost all of its hot gas, according to studies. made in X-rays with the Chandra telescope, is concentrated in its central region. It also seems to have a long tail that was also thought to be produced by this event, but which is actually a system of dust clouds in our galaxy that is totally unrelated to NGC 4435.
NGC 4438:
NGC 4438 is a hard-to-classify galaxy that has been classified as both a spiral galaxy and a lenticular galaxy, which explains its inclusion in Halton C. Arp's Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies. It is one of the most notable galaxies in the cluster due to its highly distorted appearance, which shows that it is undergoing or has undergone gravitational interactions, and for the unknown mechanism that causes its central region to show activity, and that it has expelled opposing gas loops at one the other. A starburst, a black hole, or an active galactic nucleus has been thought of, and all possibilities are under investigation. It also shows a low content of neutral hydrogen, perhaps due to its friction with the hot gas that fills the intergalactic medium of Virgo or with the corona of hot gas that surrounds the nearby galaxy M86 and/or due to having been torn away by gravitational attraction. of some galaxy with which it was about to collide (perhaps M86 itself), in addition to a displacement of the different components of its interstellar medium (neutral hydrogen, molecular hydrogen, hot gas, and interstellar dust, which reaches up to a distance of 4-5 kiloparsecs from its disk) in the direction of NGC 4435 -which tends to be attributed, however, to friction with the aforementioned intergalactic medium-, and finally traces of having undergone several bursts of star formation.
A pair of interacting galaxies?
NGC 4435 and NGC 4438 have been and are considered by numerous authors to be a pair of interacting galaxies, having calculated that the two galaxies came close 100 million years ago to just 16,000 light years from each other. In any case, and despite the strong evidence in favor of an interaction between the two, other scientists have expressed doubts as to whether the two galaxies are actually interacting despite their apparent proximity, since their redshifts are different and NGC 4435 is barely visible. has suffered the effects of such interaction. It has also been speculated that NGC 4438 may actually be two galaxies merging, having nothing to do with NGC 4435, which has interacted in the past with M86 (to which it seems to be joined by filaments of gas and in which it is detected certain amount of interstellar dust and atomic and ionized hydrogen that seems to come from NGC 4438, which reinforces this possibility) causing the peculiarities observed in it, that the three mentioned galaxies have interacted with each other, and even that NGC 4438 may be being torn apart by the gravity (tidal forces) of M87, which is only 58 arcminutes away from it (and seems to have gotten as close as 300 kiloparsecs).