Markarian's Chain of Galaxies

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...

The light captured in this image, was emitted around the time that the Dinosaurs became extinct on Earth.

 

A wide-field mosaic of a section of Markarian's Chain, a chain of Galaxies that forms part of the Virgo Supercluster (a cluster of a several thousand Galaxies, 60 million light-years away in the direction of the constellation Virgo). When viewed from Earth, the Galaxies lie along a curved line.

 

The Virgo Supercluster (Virgo SC) or the Local Supercluster (LSC or LS) is a mass concentration of Galaxies containing the Virgo Cluster and Local Group, which in turn contains the Milky Way and Andromeda Galaxies. At least 100 Galaxy groups and clusters are located within its diameter of 33 megaparsecs (110 million light-years). The Virgo SC is one of about 10 million superclusters in the Observable Universe and is in the Pisces–Cetus Supercluster Complex, a Galaxy Filament.

 

A few quotes:

"There is an odd mannequin shape that is presented by the distribution of galaxies. This work has been done mainly by Margaret Geller with her collaborator John Huchra at Harvard University and the Smithsonian Institution. It's a little like soap bubbles in a bathtub or dishwashing detergent. The galaxies are on the surfaces of the bubbles. The insides of the bubbles seem to have no galaxies in them at all." - Carl Sagan - Cosmos - The Edge of Forever (S01E10).

 

The size and age of the cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding. Lost somewhere between immensity and eternity is our tiny planetary home, the Earth." - Carl Sagan - Cosmos - The Shores of the Cosmic Ocean (S01E01).

 

About this image:

Imaged in LRGB over several sessions in July 2019 from the Southern Hemisphere.

 

Image Acquisition & Plate Solving:

SGP Mosaic and Framing Wizard.

PlaneWave PlateSolve 2 via SGP.

 

Integration time:

18 hours.

 

Processing:

Pre-Processing and Linear workflow in PixInsight,

and finished in Photoshop.

 

Astrometry Info:

Center RA, Dec: 187.055, 12.888

Center RA, hms: 12h 28m 13.184s

Center Dec, dms: +12° 53' 17.123"

Size: 3.26 x 2.5 deg

Radius: 2.054 deg

Pixel scale: 7.33 arcsec/pixel

Orientation: Up is 88.3 degrees E of N

View an Annotated Sky Chart of this image.

View this image in the WorldWideTelescope.

 

Flickr Explore:

2019-11-03

 

Also see:

The Fornax Galaxy Cluster.

 

Photo usage and Copyright:

Medium-resolution photograph licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Terms (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). For High-resolution Royalty Free (RF) licensing, contact me via my site: Contact.

 

Martin

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Done