* WARNING, VERY LARGE IMAGE AT FULL RESOLUTION REQUIRING ENOUGH PC RAM TO OPEN*

The Markarian Chain is a striking, curved alignment of galaxies within the Virgo Cluster, named after astrophysicist Benjamin Markarian, who first identified the chain as a distinct feature in the 1960s. Member galaxies include the giant ellipticals M84 and M86, situated at one end of the chain (bottom right in the image), and the pair composed of NGC 4435 & NGC 4438, popularly known as 'the Eyes Galaxies'. Situated approximately 50 million light-years distant, the gravitational interactions resulting from the close encounter of these two galaxies have stripped away their stars, gas, and dust, imparting a distinctive appearance to the pair.
At the opposite end of the Markarian chain lies M88, a beautiful spiral galaxy about 50 million light-years away from Earth, positioned top left in the picture. Elliptical galaxies NGC4477, NGC4459, NGC 4473 along with the active spiral galaxy NGC4388 are other prominent members of the Markarian's Chain.

M87, in the bottom left of this cosmic canvas, is a massive elliptical galaxy in the Virgo constellation, housing trillions of stars. It's one of the largest nearby galaxies and boasts thousands times more globular clusters than the Milky Way. One of its notable features is a jet of energetic plasma, originating from the supermassive black hole in the galaxy's core, which was imaged in 2019 by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). This jet is 5,000 light-years long and is thought to be the reason M87 is one of the brightest radio sources in the sky.

Numerous other galaxies of varied shapes and sizes adorn this remarkably rich field of view, with some exceptionally distant galaxy clusters barely discernible in the background—a testament to the vastness of the universe.

This panoramic vista is the result of a 4 tiles mosaic, boasting over 200 million pixels in the full resolution image and comprising 60 hours of exposure collected over several weeks.
LRGB image, 2540/390/330/340 minutes respectively in total