Stellar Shot of the Week: July 9, 2021
"Markarian’s Chain" - by Tom Wideman
Congratulations to this week's Stellar Shot selection, which goes to one of the best renditions we've ever seen of Markarian's chain taken by Tom Wideman. Per Tom's own words, "Markarian’s Chain is a curved line of galaxies in the Virgo Cluster, anchored by Messiers 84 and 86. This 4-degree wide field of view also contains Messiers 87, 88, 89, 90, and 91, and numerous NGC and IC galaxies as well. [Annotated image attached just for fun. This was the first image from my new ZWO ASI2600MM-Pro, on a StellarVue SV70T. It’s on a Losmandy G-11 with Gemini 2, and was guided through an Orion Mini 50mm guide scope with a ZWO ASI290Mini guide camera. Captured with Sequence Generator Pro and processed in Pixinsight. It is an integration of 40 three-minute Luminance and 10 each five-minute Red, Green, and Blue exposures (4:30 total exposure).
Tom's processing here is absolutely incredible, and the fact that it was taken with a small-aperture 70mm scope (albeit a very nice one) is mind boggling. We cannot highly-enough recommend taking a look at the full size version on our website or on Tom's Flickr page, which can be found here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/tomwideman/. Tom also provided an annotated version of the image which we have included on our website as well, but please make sure to submit your own images to us by email (mail@stellarvue.com) or by tagging them on social media with #stellarvue and #stellarshot.
Image details:
- Integration Time: 4.5 Hours
- Imaging Telescope: Stellarvue SV70T
- Camera: ZWO ASI2600MM-P
- Filters: Astrodon OIII and Astronomik Ha with SHO Stars
- Software: SGP, PHD2, PixInsight & Photoshop CC"
