M87 and Markarian's Chain, shot on 2017-03-25
Just before the Event Horizon Telescope started its imaging run on the supermassive black hole at the center of M87, I was imaging the same region of the sky with my Celestron Edge HD 925. The galaxy in question, M87, is in the lower left corner of this image. It is the closest Brightest Cluster Galaxy (BCG) to us, and it shows a relativistic jet when you take enough data to capture that feature.
The other galaxies that cross the top part of this picture are known as Markarian's Chain -- all of the prominent galaxies in this picture are part of the Virgo Cluster. M87 and the rest of the Virgo Cluster galaxies are about 55 million light years away. At that distance, if there was a civilization looking back at Earth, the image they would currently get is of a planet whose biosphere had just rebounded from the Chicxulub impact. However, any such image is exceedingly unlikely. On the full size scale of this image (1684x2408 pixels), the supermassive black hole would be 16 millionths of a pixel in size. That black hole is roughly 3 million times the diameter of the Earth. Using a radio telescope the size of the Earth, we were just able to resolve the black hole.
This image is a mosaic of 4 separate tiles. Each of those is a stack of 4 minute exposures. Images were shot with an Edge HD 925 at f/2.3 with Hyperstar and an Atik 314L+ color CCD. Preprocessing was done in Nebulosity. The stacking, initial processing, and mosaic composition was done in PixInsight. Final processing was done in PixInsight and PS CS 5.1.
The image center (J2000) is at:
RA 12h 29m 9s
DEC +13° 0' 17"
The image spans 1° 10' by 1° 40'.
There are 14 galaxies with NGC designations, and about 100 galaxies in total visible in the picture.
M87 and Markarian's Chain, shot on 2017-03-25
Just before the Event Horizon Telescope started its imaging run on the supermassive black hole at the center of M87, I was imaging the same region of the sky with my Celestron Edge HD 925. The galaxy in question, M87, is in the lower left corner of this image. It is the closest Brightest Cluster Galaxy (BCG) to us, and it shows a relativistic jet when you take enough data to capture that feature.
The other galaxies that cross the top part of this picture are known as Markarian's Chain -- all of the prominent galaxies in this picture are part of the Virgo Cluster. M87 and the rest of the Virgo Cluster galaxies are about 55 million light years away. At that distance, if there was a civilization looking back at Earth, the image they would currently get is of a planet whose biosphere had just rebounded from the Chicxulub impact. However, any such image is exceedingly unlikely. On the full size scale of this image (1684x2408 pixels), the supermassive black hole would be 16 millionths of a pixel in size. That black hole is roughly 3 million times the diameter of the Earth. Using a radio telescope the size of the Earth, we were just able to resolve the black hole.
This image is a mosaic of 4 separate tiles. Each of those is a stack of 4 minute exposures. Images were shot with an Edge HD 925 at f/2.3 with Hyperstar and an Atik 314L+ color CCD. Preprocessing was done in Nebulosity. The stacking, initial processing, and mosaic composition was done in PixInsight. Final processing was done in PixInsight and PS CS 5.1.
The image center (J2000) is at:
RA 12h 29m 9s
DEC +13° 0' 17"
The image spans 1° 10' by 1° 40'.
There are 14 galaxies with NGC designations, and about 100 galaxies in total visible in the picture.