With his SVX180T, Nicola Beltraminelli managed to capture this unworldly shot of Markarian’s Chain. Viewed from Earth as a smooth, curved line, this stretch of galaxies forms part of the Virgo Cluster. Toward the center, a pair of galaxies (NGC 4438 & NGC 4435) known as Markarian’s Eyes, appear to be interacting with one another. The chain rests at a distance of 50 million light-years away from Earth.
According to Nicola: "The initial project was to integrate my data set in large collaboration aiming at capturing the entire chain, however my setting being in-adapted with respect to the focal length, it was unsuitable for the project. So, I decided to progress alone with the hope to capture as much as possible signal on the HaLRGB channels, but more specifically in Ha. As a matter of fact, a hydrogen bridge has been described between M86 and NGC4438. This bridge has been already captured and illustrated with fantastic images by several brilliant astrophotographers in Astrobin, therefore I tried to achieve my own result with my setting. As I have a remote scope in Spain, achieving 100 hours accumulated exposure was finally not so much of an issue, whereas capturing the extremely weak Ha emissions using my F/7 scope was another story..."
The result:
"For the processing, I used the now classical approach to process the RGB layers (Channel combination, BXT, SPCC,...), whereas for the Ha channel very frustratingly I failed to see a clear, distinguishable signal from and between the galaxies. I therefore applied Continuum Subtraction to separate the general Ha emission of the galaxies, from the bridge and the streams. Using this process, I obtained a much cleaner signal, that however required further processing. As a matter of fact, I observed very bright regions around M86 and the eyes, for which I had to apply masks to avoid burning the image, whereas the bridge was close to the background, thus needing particular attention to separate signal from noise. While I tried to generate a coherent image, I cannot exclude some artifacts on the Ha channel (and possibly on some very weak signals on L)."
Details:
Imaging Telescope: Stellarvue SVX180T
Imaging Cameras: ZWO ASI6200MM Pro
Mounts: 10Micron GM2000 HPS II
Filters:
- Astrodon H-alpha 5nm 50 mm
- Chroma Blue 50 mm
- Chroma Clear 50 mm
- Chroma Green 50 mm
- Chroma Red 50 mm
Software:
- Adobe Lightroom Classic
- Adobe Photoshop
- Pleiades Astrophoto PixInsight
- Stefan Berg Nighttime Imaging 'N' Astronomy (N.I.N.A. / NINA)
References:
Salvatore Iovene - http://iovene.com/. (n.d.). Iconic Markarian’s Chain: a 105 hours project in HaLRGB. AstroBin. https://www.astrobin.com/0wooj7/F/
Wikipedia contributors. (2024, July 18). Markarian’s Chain. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markarian%27s_Chain
Markarian’s Chain | Deep⋆Sky Corner. (n.d.). https://deepskycorner.ch/obj/markarian_chain.en.php
Cannistra, S. (n.d.). Markarian’s Chain. http://www.starrywonders.com/markarian.html
Admin. (2018, November 20). Markarian’s Chain - Messier Objects. Messier Objects. https://www.messier-objects.com/markarians-chain/