The Markarian's Chain is a distinctive alignment of galaxies located in the constellation Virgo. It is a visually striking group of galaxies that appears as a string or chain of galaxies stretching across the night sky. The chain is named after the Armenian astrophysicist, B.E. Markarian, who extensively studied and cataloged the galaxies in this region.
The Markarian's Chain is actually a part of the larger Virgo Cluster, which is one of the nearest galaxy clusters to the Milky Way. It consists of a series of interacting and gravitationally bound galaxies, meaning that their mutual gravitational forces have influenced their shapes and positions over time. The galaxies in the chain are interacting through tidal forces, causing some of them to display distorted shapes, long tidal tails, or appear as peculiar irregular structures.
A very special structure in this image is the H-Alpha "bridge/connection" between M86 and NGC4438! It took me about 33hrs of exposure time to even get a little bit of contrast between the noisefloor/background and signal from the structure itself. I captured these Ha images under a ~40-70% illuminated moon so not optimal, to get even more details I would have to expose even longer and under new moon.
In this animated gif you can see the color version and the processed H-Alpha image.
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