Virgo Galaxy Cluster – a wide field with zoom-ins

Observation Notes

A trip to the Arizona desert (following the eclipse in Texas) gave me the opportunity to take this wide field image of the Virgo Galaxy Cluster (though not optimal skies owing to the light pollution of
Tucson in the south). The virgo galaxy cluster is a massive gravitational bound structure centered around M87, some 50 Mly away and containing somewhere between 1300 and 2000 galaxies. These galaxies can be nicely captured with the wide field of view of a 135mm lens (my air-travel-suitable scope), which provides plenty of galaxies (see annotated image, revision C) but at the same time some resolution on the individual objects, enough that one can see some features in the galaxy like spiral arms and tidal tails. Zooming around in the image is a lot of fun, so I set up a collage containing the image and some detailed zoomed-in snap shots (revision D).

Data were taken in 2024 April 14 and 15.

Technical Details

View the full-resolution image together with complete acquisition and processing details on AstroBin.