Markarian's Chain Through Binoculars

[gliderpilot]

I gave a talk to Wiltshire Astronomical Society titled “Binocular Observing” on 3 May and, as I drove back across Salisbury Plain, decided to practice what I preach by having an impromptu stop at our Tilshead observing site and use my 15x50IS on my homemade parallelogram mount.

A few minutes after stopping, my eyes were getting used to the dark as I quickly set up. As the horizon is so good here, I decided to head south and swung over to the Virgo galaxy region. First up was bright galaxy M104 which is not visible from my garden observatory. It is an easy starhop from Corvus and always a joy to observe although I must get the 8” onto it before it disappears again.

I then decided to scan across the core of the Virgo galaxy cluster towards M87, M84 and M86. To my surprise, I also caught NGC 4435 which forms “The Eyes” with NGC 4438 although they appear as a uniform glow at the limit of vision through the binoculars - sketch below. This means that the brighter elements of Markarian's chain are visible through binoculars!!

As it was now getting late ~2300 (local), I star hopped to M68 (visible); M83 (not visible) and enjoyed the old favourites of M64 (Black Eye Galaxy) and M53 (globular cluster) both in Coma Berenices.

It was at this point that it all kicked off. Bear in mind that I was in a public carpark wihere there was no noise other than the sounds of the wind and owls plus the occasional car. Suddently, the artillery opened up with deep booms followed by small arms fire and a whole load of flares floating down on the parrachutes. All this was several miles to the north but it didn't half make me jump out of my skin!!

It was quite a way to finishing some peaceful observing.

[Hypernova]

That is a nice report of a spur-of-the-moment observing session

The little sketch shows pretty much what I can observe of those galaxies from my suburban garden with the dob, albeit at a lower magnification. It looks like I really need to get myself up to some dark site and see what I am missing!

[Skylook123]

For me, Markarian's Chain really came alive about 8 years ago observing it from a much different perspective - moderate aperture, and dark, high elevation skies.

At the Grand Canyon South Rim Star Party, we are at 7000 foot elevation in dry mountain desert air, less than 20 percent humidity, little to no ambient light. When the crowd at the telescope was down to two or three at a time, spur of the moment I moved over to M86 and panned in elevation. Down picked up The Eyes, upward picked up a river of galaxies. At 105X in the 18" dob, I allowed each visitor to lift the nose of the scope and you could hear the gasps. We could get as many as 15 galaxies in each eyepiece field. So much there! At around 10 PM in June, the visitors can stand flatfooted at the eyepiece and just lift the nose and fall into a sea of galaxies.

Awfully good capture of the field, Gliderpilot! My vision could do nothing nearly as exquisite.

[gliderpilot]

It's a cracking region isn't it? We had great views through Owen Brazell's 15inch dob at our last Salisbury Plain observing group a few months ago. So many galaxies as you move across such a small region of sky. I'm sure your desert skies will beat our UK skies so I can only imagine how great it was at the Grand Canyon!

Clear skies to you,

Mark

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Binoculars are just great, especially from a dark spot. People often don't believe the things you can spot with bins.