The Heart of the Virgo Cluster (Jeff Rothstein)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Virgo (Vir) · Contains: M 84 · M 86 · M 87 · NGC 4374 · NGC 4388 · NGC 4402 · NGC 4406 · NGC 4425 · NGC 4435 · NGC 4438 · NGC 4459 · NGC 4461 · NGC 4473 · NGC 4474 · NGC 4477 · NGC 4486 · Virgo Galaxy

The Heart of the Virgo Cluster, Jeff Rothstein

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The Heart of the Virgo Cluster

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The Heart of the Virgo Cluster

Here is a two-panel mosaic of an attractive part of the Virgo Cluster, including M87 and Markarian's Chain. The brightest galaxies in this image lie 53 to 60 million light years away.

Depending on the source, M87 is home to a trillion or perhaps several trillion stars, so 10x or more stars than there are in the Milky Way. That makes it one of the largest known galaxies in what I see is called the "Local Universe", rather a contradiction in terms, I think.

Markarian's Chain is group of seven galaxies that move in concert through space. There seems to be some doubt as to whether M84, the furthest-right large galaxy in this image, is part of the Chain or is merely superposed from our line of sight. But either way, its presence makes for a better image.

I imaged just Markarian's Chain a couple of years ago with an earlier version of my rig, and I struggled to bring out any color. Here I was able to capture color in a number of galaxies, especially The Eyes, NGC 4435 and 4438 (Arp 120). This image rewards a deep look. There are many small galaxies, as well as details in some of the larger galaxies. Note especially that you can see the relativistic jet emanating from the black hole at M87's heart.

Processed entirely in PixInsight. Integration time is the total time for the mosaic; each panel was about half, or just under 9 hours.

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Distribution of astrophotographers

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	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
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Top pick nominations

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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
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	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
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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	9675382
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

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The Heart of the Virgo Cluster

The Heart of the Virgo Cluster

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The Heart of the Virgo Cluster

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