Markarian’s Chain
Sketch by Eric Graff
This beautiful chain of island universes lies some 70 million light years away, at the heart of the Virgo Cluster of Galaxies. The cluster contains more than 2000 galaxies, about 1 percent of which are visible in Eric Graff’s sketch above. Eric created this mosaic while observing with his 6″ Newtonian reflector.
Eric,
M-87 is not alone in this masterpiece of observing and sketching. Somewhere arount 20 galaxies I can see.
Frank
Thanks Frank! 🙂
This sketch was done on June 22, 2002 from Observatory Park on Palomar Mountain.
Eric
Eric,
One to be proud of!
How many fields of view were needed to complete the mosaic?
Rony
Thank you Rony!
I don’t really recall exactly how many fields it required. The bright foreground stars were pre-plotted from an atlas. I remember placing M84 (the bright galaxy on the left) at the preceeding edge of the field of view of the low-power ocular and just letting the scene drift by, adding to the sketch as the earth’s rotation brought additional objects into the field of view. I know it took several scans (probably 3-4) working from north to south to catch everything. I also dialed up the magnification to confirm some of the fainter galaxies along Markarian’s Chain and around M87.
Eric
Eric,
HOLY COW!!!!!!!!!
That is just one of the most awesome sketches of a galaxy cluster I think I have ever seen.
Simply magnificent!!
~WadeVC