Virgo A Jet 10/04/21

[Les Ewan]

Lovely galaxy viewing last night. When upgrading to a  driven16" Dob Newt three years ago I had high hopes of seeing  the M87 jet visually. I've not been able to do so disappointingly. However using the Skywatcher 400P I manage to image the jet with  a 2X barlow attached to my Nikon D3200 SLR and at the very limits of the set up.   

The exposure was 30 seconds at  6400ISO and a little tweaking using Faststone.

I know the image is far from perfect but its amazing what ordinary equipment can do these days.😃

[kirkster501]

Nice.  That is almost certainly not the relativistic jet though, there are two small galaxies that are often confused with the jet;  the jet is extremely faint visually although not too bad for picking up in an image.  You have almost no chance of viewing it visually unless with a very large instrument in very dark skies with super seeing.  Your 400P could possibly do it in said dark skies and A1 seeing.

The post on my website may help:

https://skastro.net/m87-the-giant-elliptical-galaxy-in-virgo-tec-140/

Edited April 10, 2021 by kirkster501