Starship Asterisk*

Markarian's Chain to Messier 64

Explanation: Top to bottom, this colorful and broad telescopic mosaic links Markarian's Chain of galaxies across the core of the Virgo Cluster to dusty spiral galaxy Messier 64. Galaxies are scattered through the field of view that spans some 20 full moons across a gorgeous night sky. The cosmic frame is also filled with foreground stars from constellations Virgo and the well-groomed Coma Berenices, and faint, dusty nebulae drifting above the plane of the Milky Way. Look carefully for Markarian's eyes. The famous pair of interacting galaxies is near the top, not far from M87, the Virgo cluster's giant elliptical galaxy. At the bottom, you can stare down Messier 64, also known as the Black Eye Galaxy. The Virgo Cluster is the closest large galaxy cluster to our own local galaxy group. Virgo Cluster galaxies are about 50 million light-years distant, but M64 lies a mere 17 million light-years away.

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Universe seems to be a dusty place....

But this is a interesting shot of so many galaxies.

:---[===] *

That's an amazing, fantastic picture, and I can just imagine the time it took to shoot this much sky and stitch the mosaic together! (No, I can't.)

But it is very hard to find your way through this image, because there is such a profusion of stars and galaxies here, and the stars don't have any diffraction spikes, and nothing is annotated, and the picture is "upside down". That is, south it up, and I think east is to the right.

Anyway, these are a few things I have found here:


















At top left in today's APOD, you can find the bluest-looking galaxy in the field, M99, located to the right of a bright blue star, 6 Coma Berenecis (6 Com). (To the left of 6 Com is another galaxy, M98.)

At bottom right, you can find uneven globular clusters M53 and NGC 5053. In Rogelio Bernal Andreo's picture M53 (the bright one) is located to the lower left of NGC 5053 (the faint one).

Let's get back to the top left corner of the picture. To the lower right of M99 you can find the interesting galaxy pair NGC 4298/4302. And farther below M99 is M100 with blue spiral arms and a yellow halo.



















At top center in today's APOD by Rogelio Bernal Andreo is Markarian's Chain. At left is another picture of Markarian's Chain. In the picture at left, giant elliptical galaxy M87 is at top left, and two other giant elliptical galaxies, M86 and M84, are at bottom. Don't miss The Eyes, NGC 4435 and NGC 4438! Again however, the picture at left doesn't show Markarian's Chain with north at top. This is how it looks with north at top in a photo by Alson Wong.
Finally, don't mss the amazing Black-Eye Galaxy, M64, at bottom left of today's APOD. In the APOD it really looks as if the galaxy is wearing a black eye patch over its core!

It's a great APOD! Does anyone feel like annotating it?

EDIT: Oh, it's been done already! Is that you, Geck? Thanks!

Ann

Boomer12k wrote:
Universe seems to be a dusty place....

• It couldn't be Messier.

Ann wrote:It's a great APOD! Does anyone feel like annotating it?
EDIT: Oh, it's been done already! Is that you, Geck? Thanks!

I supplied the annotated version

Thanks!
Rogelio

Is there anything significant about the second set of 'Eyes' about halfway between the marked 'Eyes' and NGC4473.
Or is this just a coincidental alignment?

Will Heslop

RBAF wrote:

Ann wrote:It's a great APOD! Does anyone feel like annotating it?
EDIT: Oh, it's been done already! Is that you, Geck? Thanks!

I supplied the annotated version

Thanks!
Rogelio

Thanks, Rogelio!

Ann

Will Heslop wrote:Is there anything significant about the second set of 'Eyes' about halfway between the marked 'Eyes' and NGC4473.
Or is this just a coincidental alignment?

Will Heslop

Interesting question, Will Heslop. The two pairs (NGC 4435/4438 and NGC 4458/4461) really look strikingly similar in several ways. The elongated member of the pair is the larger one, and both elongated galaxies are tilted in the same direction and has its round companion located on the same side of itself, and the proportion in size between the elongated galaxy and the round one is the same. And the two pairs are located very close to one another in the sky.

My software, Guide, suggests that the fainter pair may be more distant than "The Eyes". But this is not certain.
There are more pairs oriented in more or less the same way as "The Eyes" in today's APOD. NGC 4298/4302 is an obvious example. Even M90 and its small companion can be seen as an example.

Is this a coincidence? I have no idea.

Ann

Ann wrote:But it is very hard to find your way through this image, because there is such a profusion of stars and galaxies here, and the stars don't have any diffraction spikes, and nothing is annotated, and the picture is "upside down". That is, south it up, and I think east is to the right.

It looks to me that south is to the upper right and east is to the lower right.

Can't resist...

APOD Robot wrote:
Tomorrow's picture: ... it's Superbubble

Could it be....? http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?p=272196#p272196

eso.org wrote:

This image shows a three-colour composite of the N 70 nebula. It is a "Super Bubble" in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite galaxy to the Milky Way system, located in the southern sky at a distance of about 160,000 light-years.

Superbubble?

Ann