Tracked and Stacked Markarian's Chain You don't need a gigantic telescope or a huge aperture to record faint galaxies like this. This image was made with a very small telescope of only 70mm aperture and 420mm of focal length. The secrets to making an image like this are shooting under a dark sky and using lots of total exposure. Here 25 two-minute exposures were stacked together to produce the final image.

Markarian's chain, in the heart of the Virgo cluster, is a group of galaxies that can be seen curving from lower right to the upper left in this photo.

It contains the giant lenticular galaxies M86 and M84 at right, and M87, a giant elliptical galaxy at lower left. Located about 70 million light years away, the Virgo cluster is a gigantic collection of several thousand galaxies that dominate our local part of the universe.

M84 was studied by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1997 and was found to contain a massive central object, estimated at 300 million solar masses, located less than 26 light years from the center of the galaxy.

NGC 4438 and NGC 4435, known as "The Eyes" appear to be physically interacting, distorting NGC 4438. They can be seen just to the right of the center of the photo.

M87 is the largest and brightest galaxy in this photo. It contains a very active nucleus that is a strong source of radio waves called Virgo A and a jet of matter extending 5,000 light years that was probably ejected by a massive black hole at the center of the galaxy. M87 also has an unusually large number of globular clusters, estimated to number about 12,000, in a halo surrounding the galaxy.

Markarian's chain is named after Armenian astrophysicist B. E. Markarian who discovered it.

Image Data

• Lens / Scope: Stellarvue SV70ED ED doublet refractor
• Focal Length: 420mm
• F/stop: f/6
• Exposure: Stack of twenty-five 2-minute exposures (50 minutes total exposure)
• Mount: Orion Sirius polar-aligned German-equatorial mount
• Guiding: None
• Camera: Unmodified Canon EOS 1000D (Digital Rebel XS)
• Mode: JPEG
• ISO: 1600
• White Balance: Custom, set on sky background
• In-Camera Noise Reduction: Off
• Filter: None
• Temp: 21F
• Start Time: 2:03 a.m.
• Date: March 25, 2009
• Location: Maxwell, NJ
• Calibration: None
• Processing: Standard in-camera JPEG processing. Stacked in Deepsky Stacker. Contrast and color adjusted in post processing.