I apologize in advance, but I do not speak English well, so I used Google translator to write this text.
On the border of the constellations Virgo and Coma Veronica, there is an object that can rightfully be called the pearl of the spring sky of the northern hemisphere - a bright group of galaxies called the Markarian Chain. They were named after the Soviet scientist, famous astrophysicist of the Armenian SSR Veniamin Egishevich Markaryan (1913-1985). In December 1961, the "Astronomical Journal" published an article by V. E. Markaryan entitled "Physical chain of galaxies in the Virgo cluster and its dynamical instability." On three pages of the article, Markarian outlined a probabilistic analysis of the hypothesis that the bright chain of galaxies, which begins in Virgo with the M84 / M86 pair, bends towards the Coma Veronica and ends with NGC 4477, is not just a randomly aligned group, but a physically connected chain of galaxies in which have a common movement. In essence, the scientist used statistics to prove "that the small probability of a chain forming by chance strongly supports the assumption that the chain is a physical system."
For the first time, I learned about the Markarian Chain from colleagues at the astroforum in 2018, but I got to shooting it only in the spring of 2023. Due to certain circumstances and weather conditions, I managed to collect 18 hours of useful signal on this object (220x300sec). Filming took place over 10 nights in April-May 2023. The height of the galaxies during the shooting did not exceed 40 degrees. Then the object became even lower above the horizon and we had to stop shooting. Most likely in the future I will return to shooting these galaxies, I did not expect that I would like them so much. The plans are to increase the accumulation and add a signal in the hydrogen line (Ha) to the existing frames.
Comments