Continuing my hiatus from Arp galaxies due to clouds and moon light here is the heart of the Virgo Cluster. I took this one through clouds and a three quarter moon in April. I had hoped to retake it but since then the weather has been even worse for imaging so I spent the last few nights trying to get something out of all the glows from the clouds and moon. It doesn't begin to go as deep as I would have liked. Seeing though was good for me giving me some incentive to push on. This is the result.

Other galaxies in the image are NGC 4387 in the center, NGC 4388 at the bottom, the only spiral, and IC 3303 just right of the right edge of the triangle formed by M86, M84 and NGC 4388.

Looking through NED I came up with something that is very odd and I'm not sure if is correct. Below the center galaxy NGC 4387 are two faint fuzzies large enough to see some detail. One (left) is spiral like and the right one round like an elliptical. Looking them up I found the left one is actually a lenticular galaxy, SDSS J122555.70+124611.0 at mag 17.9. Its redshift puts it well in the Virgo Cluster. But the one nearly directly below NGC 4387 is PGC 40577 at magnitude 17.5. Being both bigger and brighter of the two I figured it closer. But NED's redshift data puts it at the amazing distance of 3.27 billion light years! YIKES! Can that be right?!?! I just don't know. If it is that is one unbelievably large galaxy. Of the others in the field I was able to look up about half were in the cluster and half showed red shifts far beyond the cluster.

Note that M86 shows a blue shift and is the M object with the highest blue shift so it is approaching us even more rapidly than M31. But the gravitational field of the cluster is still considered sufficient to prevent it from leaving the cluster. Dark Matter to our rescue? On the other hand NGC 4388 is receding at a rate twice what you'd expect from a cluster member so it's zooming the other way almost as fast as M86 is heading our way. But it to is a member of the cluster. IC 3303 also shows a blue shift though not as high as M86. There are members of the cluster that do have blue shifts higher than M86, they just aren't M objects.

A less compressed version is at:
http://www.spacebanter.com/attachmen...tid=2000&stc=1

14" LX200R @ f/10, 4x10' binned 2x2, RGB=2x10' binned 3x3, STL-11000XM,
Paramount ME

Rick

Attached Images

M84-6L4X10RGB2X10X3R-7.jpg (139.7 KB, 16 views)

Rick,

Very interesting shots and discussion. Lots of depth out of 40 minutes luminance, that's the benefit of binning. And you certainly don't need more pixels to get fine details.

--Andy

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Observatorio de la Ballona

Very very Deep! Wow Rick very impressive image and the galaxy you pointed out it's size and distance is remarkable and the info very educative thanks again. By the way it looks like a happy face Clear Skies my friend.