Markarian's Chain with 90mm refractor

[drjolo]

At the very end of astronomical winter clouds eventually went away for a few nights. I still have a 3 by 2 degrees FOV setup in my backyard shed, so I have pointed it to the Virgo cluster and captured six hours of luminance to check it out. Despite the light polluted sky (19-19.5 mag/arcsec2) some interesting details and views appeared in the frame. 

Imaged with TecnoSky 90/540 Owl refractor and QHY268M camera on EQ6 mount. Baader L filter, 175x2 minutes. 

Full frame view:

NGC4438 area

NGC4440 with a faint dwarf galaxy or galaxy cluster above it http://simbad.cds.unistra.fr/simbad/sim-id?Ident=%401934832&Name=LEDA 40932&submit=submit - there are more such faint blobs around the frame.

NGC4459 lenticular galaxy, and another faint blob above the image center and a bit left

And also the M87 jet ( at 2 o'clock )- less stretched, but scaled up 200%. 

Ten years ago I would never hope to catch some decent galaxy images with a 90mm refractor  

[Ags]

Gorgeous!

[kirkster501]

Brill Lucas.