Markarian's Chain (Brian Fulda)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Virgo (Vir) · Contains: IC 3303 · IC 3393 · M 84 · M 86 · NGC 4374 · NGC 4387 · NGC 4388 · NGC 4402 · NGC 4406 · NGC 4413 · NGC 4425 · NGC 4435 · NGC 4438 · NGC 4458 · NGC 4461 · NGC 4473 · The Eyes

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Markarian's Chain

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Markarian's Chain

This is a string of galaxies known as Markarian’s Chain in the Virgo Cluster. I captured this data over this past weekend while camping with friends under some pristinely dark skies in Death Valley National Park. Stargazing is so much more fun with others!

Located at around 60-70 million light years away, most of the galaxies in this image move cohesively with each other. The two galaxies at center once came within 16,000 light years of each other (very close!), and gravitational forces from each have torn out material, which is the reason for their irregular shape.

I’m really excited about this image because I think it is one of my best so far. Including faint galaxies, I counted at least 79 of them in the image. That’s mind blowing to me.

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Distribution of astrophotographers

This table shows the number of distinct astrophotographers who have been assigned and IOTD/TP award compared to the total number of images awarded.
	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

Distribution of subject types

This table shows the distribution of awards per subject type, compared to the popularity of images of that subject type.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

Distribution of data sources

This table shows the distribution of awards per data source, compared to the popularity of images acquired from that data source.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
Promotions by Submitters When 3 distinct Submitters promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for Top Pick status. This requirement, in addition to anonymization of images and distribution to only a subset of them, prevents biases and ensures that the best images are selected.
Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

Status	Basic success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	2633488
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

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Markarian's Chain

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Markarian's Chain

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