[Lvas] Markarian's Chain

[Fred Rayworth]

All,

 

My final input for Roger's observing project is to see if I could see all nine galaxies aroud M-84 and M-86, which is a large part of Markarian's Chain in Virgo, the realm of galaxies.

 

Virgo was high enough in the sky to take a crack at it, and with a little zap of my green laser finder, I had this group in the field of view in an instant.

 

I had no trouble at all seeing all nine galaxies in the field, and because of this observing project, I saw that ninth one for the first time, only because I knew it was there.

 

NGC-4387 is magnitude 13, and considering the night, it was by far the faintest galaxy I saw all night. If I hadn't known it was there, I would have missed it. In fact, several other people looked at the group and only counted 8. I don't feel bad missing it so many times before!

 

I used a 26mm Q-70 eyepiece from Orion. It has a 70 degree field, and despite a fishbowl effect at the edges, I had no problem seeing even the galaxies at the edges. Of course, I moved around a bit to catch each one in the center of the field, but to satisfy the observing challenge, I DID see all 9 at once in the field.

 

All of the galaxies, even M-84 and M-86 were featureless. No mottling or any detail at all, but they were all definite faint fuzzies and all had distinct shapes. The most fascinating of the group, to me, was NGC-4388, an edge-on spiral. It was a nice, though faint large streak, and out sized and outclassed the similar NGC-4402.

 

This is the stuff I live for! Seeing nine galaxies at once, and being able to positively identify every one of them is a real thrill.

 

Attached is my requisite crummy drawing, but it should give you an idea of what you will see if you have enough aperture.

 

Fred

 

_________________________________________________________________
Hotmail® is up to 70% faster. Now good news travels really fast.
http://windowslive.com/online/hotmail?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_HM_70faster_032009
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lvlug.org/pipermail/lvas/attachments/20090329/a9021771/attachment-0001.htm 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Markarians Chain.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 17846 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lvlug.org/pipermail/lvas/attachments/20090329/a9021771/attachment-0001.jpg