Markarian's Chain and M87 (Jared Willson)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Virgo (Vir) · Contains: IC 3258 · IC 3280 · IC 3303 · IC 3311 · IC 3344 · IC 3349 · IC 3355 · IC 3363 · IC 3382 · IC 3388 · IC 3393 · IC 3443 · IC 3457 · IC 3459 · IC 794 · M 84 · M 86 · M 87 · NGC 4351 · NGC 4374 · NGC 4387 · NGC 4388 · NGC 4402 · NGC 4406 · NGC 4407 · NGC 4413 · NGC 4425 · NGC 4431 · NGC 4435 · NGC 4436 · And 13 more.

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Markarian's Chain and M87

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Markarian's Chain and M87

The Virgo Cluster of galaxies is a fairly prominent cluster centered at a distance of approximately fifty-four million light years. There are approximately 1,300 galaxies in this relatively small cluster. Three of the galaxies in the cluster were first cataloged by Charles Messier in the 1780's--M87 (the giant elliptical at the lower left), M84 (far right, center), and M86 (center right). The two galaxies nearest the center of the image are known as "the eyes" and are composed of two interacting galaxies, NGC 4438 and NGC 4435. You can see the distortion to NGC4438's disk as well as a tidal tail extending out past NGC 4435.

If you zoom in on the core of M87 you will notice a blue cone of light streaming out of the center of the galaxy. This is a relativistic jet of material being squirted out of the accretion disk surrounding the supermassive black hole at the core of M87. This particular supermassive black hole was the subject of the first successful photograph of a black hole accretion disk made in 2019.

The more prominent galaxies in the upper half of the image were first observed by William Herschel in the early 1800's and were named "Markarian's Chain" when physicist Benjamin Markarian determined in the 1960's that at least seven of them were traveling through space together.

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	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
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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.
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Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	5686667
PixInsight job	JDTTQ30LDJD6P7OQE2CGUGI3B80QQU9Q
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	12h27m58s.97
RA (top/left)	12h32m19s.46
RA (top/right)	12h23m31s.23
RA (bottom/right)	12h23m40s.23
RA (bottom/left)	12h32m24s.51

Dec (center)	+12°54′40″.6
Dec (top/left)	+13°46′59″.4
Dec (top/right)	+13°44′42″.0
Dec (bottom/right)	+12°02′07″.1
Dec (bottom/left)	+12°04′11″.1

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Markarian's Chain and M87

Markarian's Chain and M87

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Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):

Markarian's Chain and M87

Markarian's Chain and M87

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