The Virgo Cluster of Galaxies

[lensman57]

Hi,

Taken last night from my drive way. I have left the background as untouched as possible as there is dust in the line of view. This shows up in images taken from very dark sites with much longer exposures that I have been able to achieve here but 5 hours of uninterrupted imaging is unheard of for me.

20 X 900s, Stacked and processed in PI and PS.

WO Star71, QHY8 ( the old square one ), IDAS D1 and HEQ5 guided by PHD.

Thanks for looking,

A.G

[Martin Meredith]

Beautiful shot. There's so much going on in there. You've captured quite a few of the mag18-20 members of the Abell cluster 1526 just above the blue star NW of centre. That WO 71 FOV is being put to great use!

Martin

[lensman57]

Beautiful shot. There's so much going on in there. You've captured quite a few of the mag18-20 members of the Abell cluster 1526 just above the blue star NW of centre. That WO 71 FOV is being put to great use!

Martin

Thank you Martin,

I really did want to include as much as possible as you have pointed out there is a lot going on.

A.G

[lensman57]

Hi again,

I have attached a full size cropped section of the image showing the central cluster. I did use extreme dither and then drizzle in the processing to recover as much detail as possible and it did reward although the detail does not show in the original post due to the size reduction. The dust lanes are clearly visible in a couple of the galaxies and the two small  interacting galaxies making the " Eye of the Markarian ". Hope you find this interesting.

Regards,

A.G