MARKARIAN’S CHAIN
Galaxy cluster filament • Virgo • 50 million light-years from Earth
🔭
Askar 130PHQ
📷
ZWO 2600MC Pro
🌃
Bortle 8
⏱️
15 hours
🗓️
April 2026
Overview
Markarian’s Chain is an alignment of galaxies around 50 million light years from Earth in the constellation Virgo. The galaxies in the chain share a common motion through space, and form part of the wider Virgo Cluster.
Background
Spring in the Northern Hemisphere is known as Galaxy Season because they’re the main targets visible. Unfortunately, galaxies are a tough target for me because they generally appear small in the sky even through my 1000mm Askar 130PHQ telescope. Markarian’s Chain is a galaxy cluster though, meaning I can fill the frame with star cities, somewhat negative their individual small size.
For this image I used an Optolong L-Quad Enhance filter to try and help with my city light pollution. An integration time of 15 hours was enough to bring out some interesting details.
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Science
M84 is a large galaxy with lots of old stars, and not much in the way of new stars forming. At its centre is a supermassive black hole (not visible in my photo!) witha mass of 1.5 billion suns.
M86 is noteworthy because it’s moving toward us at about 240km/s, outpacing the expansion of the Universe (which is moving most galaxies away).
NGC 4388 is a spiral galaxy that we’re seeing edge-on. The disc contains dense dust lanes and areas with younger blue stars.
NGC 4402 is a spiral galaxy that’s nearly edge-on as seen from our perspective. It has a particularly dark dust lane, which shows up well in my image.
NGC 4407 is classified as a barred spiral galaxy, which I think my image shows quite well. It has less star-forming hydrogen that expected; this may have been stripped away as the galaxy has been moving through the hot gas of the Virgo Cluster.
NGC 4438 (above) and NGC 4435 (below) are collectively known as “The Eyes”. The two galaxies had a close pass about 100 million years ago, with their mutual gravity tearing away at their outer regions and distorting their shape.
IC 3355 is a bit of an odd-one-out within Markarian’s Chain. It’s an Irregular Galaxy, meaning it doesn’t have an organised structure, as most of its neighbour do. IC 3355 is also distinctly blue, because it’s made from younger, hotter stars.
Kit list
This is the equipment I used to capture the image.
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Telescope: Askar 130PHQ
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Camera: ZWO ASI 2600MC Pro
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Mount: StellarDrive X 6R PRO
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Rebuilt into a StellarDrive X 6R PRO by DarkFrame Optics.
Askar M54 Off-Axis Guider
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ZWO ASI 220MM Mini
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Control: ASIAIR Plus
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Filter: Optolong L-Quad Enhance
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Processing walkthrough
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Example source data
Here’s an example single subframe and freshly integrated stack, just with simple stretches applied.
Seestar S50 image
This is a Seestar S50 telescope photo of Makarian’s Chain, also taken from my Bortle 8 city centre location. Looks like it was positioned behind Bristol Airport’s main flight path when I took the image!
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