What a difference a dark sight makes! This image of Markarian's Chain in the Virgo Cluster was taken at the Fort Worth Astronomical Society Dark Site (Bortle 3). The difference between this image and the image taken from my driveway (Bortle 100) is amazing.
From Wikipedia:
Markarian's Chain is a stretch of
galaxies that forms part of the
Virgo Cluster. When viewed from Earth, the galaxies lie along a smoothly curved line.
Charles Messier first discovered two of the galaxies,
M84 and
M86, in 1781. The other galaxies seen in the chain were discovered by
William Herschel[1] and are now known primarily by their catalog numbers in
John Louis Emil Dreyer's
New General Catalogue, published in 1888.
[2] It was ultimately named after the
Armenianastrophysicist,
Benjamin Markarian, who discovered their common motion in the early 1960s.
[3] Member galaxies include
M84 (
NGC 4374),
M86 (
NGC 4406),
NGC 4477,
NGC 4473,
NGC 4461,
NGC 4458,
NGC 4438 and
NGC 4435. It is located at RA 12h 27m and Dec +13° 10′.The bright members of the chain are visible through
small telescopes.
Larger telescopes can be used to view the fainter galaxies .
[2] Near the center there appear the pair of interacting galaxies NGC 4438 and NGC 4435, about 50 million light-years away, known to some as
Markarian's Eyes.At least seven galaxies in the chain appear to move coherently, although others appear to be superposed by chance.
[4] Six of the points on the chain can be marked by galaxies. The other two points are pairs of galaxies.
[5]
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