Markarian's Chain of Galaxies

During Spring looking up to the constellation of Virgo we are looking out from the Milky Way. We therefore have a relatively unobstructed view of what lies beyond our own galaxy. Across the universe galaxies often form loose clusters of local groups. The Virgo Cluster is our nearest significant grouping at around 70 million light years away. In addition to the local group some of the galaxies are simply "line of sight" groupings. The field of view of this image isn't large enough to capture the full chain which continues to extend beyond the uppermost galaxy visible here. The large, lenticular galaxies on the right are M84 and M86. Above and to the left of these are a pair of galaxies which, together are known as "The Eyes".

Scope: Takahashi FSQ 106 with 0.73 reducer.

Camera: QSI 532ws.

Filters: Astronomic CLS for the luminence channel and type II RGB

Exposure details: The chain was low to the West with a fair bit of skyglow. I was aiming to keep the read noise to under 5% and, with the fast scope speed and high QE of the camera chip the subs were very short. CLS 95x40 secs, R+G 40x40 secs and B 40x60secs. Download time with this camera is around 6 secs so it felt like a lot of exposure time was being lost waiting for the camera. Dithering was out of the question! In future I will go for longer exposures.