A Portion of Markarian's Chain (Michael Feigenbaum)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Virgo (Vir) · Contains: IC 3280 · IC 3303 · IC 3355 · IC 3363 · IC 3388 · IC 3393 · M 84 · M 86 · NGC 4374 · NGC 4387 · NGC 4388 · NGC 4402 · NGC 4406 · NGC 4407 · NGC 4413 · NGC 4425 · NGC 4435 · NGC 4438 · NGC 4458 · NGC 4461 · The Eyes

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A Portion of Markarian's Chain

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A Portion of Markarian's Chain

Here we have a try at a portion of Markarian's Chain, a part of the Virgo Cluster. The group was named after Benjamin Markarian who first discovered that these galaxies were moving together. We have the two big elliptical galaxies, "The Eyes" and a several more smaller spirals that make a very beautiful frame.

I just acquired a Stellarvue 90mm Raptor from a fellow Arizona amateur and I am very pleased with the telescope. It seems to be a nice step upwards from my WO GTF81, which is a fine instrument itself. So this is the first-light for the Raptor which I think will nicely fit that focal length niche for me.

Our weather for the past 9-months or so has not been the usual Arizona great weather for our hobby and that has been somewhat frustrating. But finally I had a few nice nights with the moon on the wan to try this out.

On the acquisition and processing, I wanted to do a lot of luminance to see what kind of detail I might be able to pull out of "The Eyes" and a couple of the small spirals. I shot a little over `13 hours and critically culled that down to the best 8 hours and then did the RGB to finish it off. In processing, I did minimal noise reduction because I wanted to better preserve what is going on in the background with this being located in the Virgo Cluster. I also tried to be conservative on the color treatment and not oversaturate.

All in all, a nice project, I hope you like it. Comments and criticism always welcome...

CS and Good Health!

Cloudy Nights
Imaged with N.I.N.A.
Arizona Astrophotographers
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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	5615136
PixInsight job	4IZ9COZJPI7MFV2PO7MXGIIYRSD2X05K
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	12h26m41s.27
RA (top/left)	12h29m41s.90
RA (top/right)	12h23m45s.10
RA (bottom/right)	12h23m41s.97
RA (bottom/left)	12h29m36s.73

Dec (center)	+12°56′58″.5
Dec (top/left)	+13°23′04″.2
Dec (top/right)	+13°24′31″.9
Dec (bottom/right)	+12°30′45″.5
Dec (bottom/left)	+12°29′19″.5

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A Portion of Markarian's Chain

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