Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Virgo (Vir)  ·  Contains:  IC 3331  ·  IC 3344  ·  IC 3349  ·  IC 3355  ·  IC 3356  ·  IC 3358  ·  IC 3363  ·  IC 3371  ·  IC 3381  ·  IC 3382  ·  IC 3388  ·  IC 3393  ·  IC 3413  ·  IC 3416  ·  IC 3418  ·  IC 3427  ·  IC 3437  ·  IC 3442  ·  IC 3443  ·  IC 3446  ·  IC 3457  ·  IC 3459  ·  IC 3461  ·  IC 3470  ·  IC 3475  ·  IC 3476  ·  IC 3481  ·  IC 3483  ·  IC 3489  ·  IC 3490  ·  And 54 more.
Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
M87 and friends in widefield, Ian Dixon
Powered byPixInsight

M87 and friends in widefield

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
M87 and friends in widefield, Ian Dixon
Powered byPixInsight

M87 and friends in widefield

Equipment

Loading...

Acquisition details

Loading...

Description

Its galaxy season!

My first foray into galaxies this year is marked with a very wide field image of one of my favourite parts of the sky. Far away from the galactic plane, in Virgo, we are able to peer deep into space without confounding star clouds.

Since I learned about relativistic jets from SMBH, I have always been fascinated with M87. Bits of the relativistic jet can be just barely seen lower bottom left on M87.

Messier 87 (or Virgo A or NGC 4486) is a supergiant elliptical galaxy with several trillion stars in the constellation Virgo. M87 is cool - it has a large population of globular clusters—about 15,000, and of course the jet of energetic plasma that originates at the core and extends about 4,900 light-years out, traveling at a relativistic speed.

I was happy to gather about 7500 seconds of data on this during this past week and the weekend before, hopping out of the city to our farm, and then to a very pretty spot which our local club has dubbed "Sandilands" - an area wherein the prairie biome immediately transitions to boreal forest, and the spruce grow in huge deposits of sand and gravel.

Several bags of popcorn were harmed in the making of this image.

Thanks for looking!

Comments