A whole slew of galaxies! Two from Messier's catalog of deep sky objects, M84 and M86. M86 is the large one in the center of the photo, M84 is center bottom. These galaxies are part of the Virgo Galaxy Cluster. Most of the galaxies in this photo are classified as Elliptical's, but there are a few spiral’s as well. The cluster lies about 55 million light years distant. Both M84 and M86 were discovered my Charles Messier in 1781. They are pretty easy targets with telescopes of 4" diameter or greater.


I took this photo at the end of a very frustrating night out under the stars. I had intended to photograph another galaxy with my 8" telescope, but various problems stopped me from even getting a good alignment with that scope on my mount, so the computer couldn't find anything and I was too far off to get a good polar alignment. After fighting that for a couple of hours, I switch over to my 4.3" refractor and was up and running in no time. This was a work night and I was running out of time, so I decided to shoot M86 since I thought I could get a good photo in about an hour and then go home and sleep. One of the worst parts of this episode, is that the night was nearly perfect and I wasted most of my allotted time.

Photo details:

Date: May 20, 2009
Telescope: William Optics FLT 110 Lite
Camera: Canon Rebel XT modified by Hap Griffin
Mount: Celestron CGE
Guiding: PHD Guide, Meade DSI Pro through an Orion ST80
Exposures: 12 x 5 minutes at ISO1600