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In this episode of Star Hopping with Kissimmee Park Observatory, we'll continue looking at
the Realm of the Galaxies, and show you how to find these beautiful deep sky objects:
Messier 84 Messier 86
And the Eyes Galaxies
Alright, Let's Go Star Hopping!
Hey Hello Hi and welcome to Episode 19 of Star Hopping with Kissimmee Park Observatory!
I'm Dave Hearn, and I'm absolutely joyous to be your host. In this series of programs
we'll show you the most beautiful sights in the night sky, and explain exactly how to
find them with your binoculars or telescope.
In this episode of Star Hopping we’ll continue our exploration of the Realm of the Galaxies.
This is the second in the series of three episodes where we’ll be checking out the
Virgo Supercluster of galaxies, because there’s just so much to cover. In the first episode
we established our Guidepost star of 6 Comae Berenices as our starting point. I’ll only
lightly review our star hopping methods to get there, so if you missed last week’s
episode, it might be a good idea to go back and familiarize yourself; just click on the
thumbnail below to play that episode first.
This week we’ll go on a true Galaxy Hop, when we traverse Markarian’s Chain, a group
of 11 galaxies that form a long arc in the dead center of the Realm. These galaxies were
named after the Armenian astronomer Benik Markarian, who discovered in the 1960s that
these galaxies all appear to be moving together in space, and all give off a similar ultraviolet
light signature. Some of these galaxies are very faint, pushing 12th magnitude, so you’ll
need a moderate sized telescope and a reasonably dark sky to pick them up in your eyepiece.
Also, you'll need to use an eyepiece that gives you the lowest magnification and consequently
the largest field of view. This is usually a 35 to 40mm eyepiece. Eyepiece focal length
has an inverse relationship with magnification; the higher the eyepiece focal length, the
lower the magnification.
So let’s get started by moving to our Guidepost star, 6 Comae Berenices. If you remember,
we started at the bright star Denebola, them moved down to 5th magnitude Omicron Leonis,
then 5 degrees further downward to 6 Coma. Now we’re ready to move to our first target,
Messier 84.
Star Hopping Target #1
To locate M84 we have to make a couple hops to first a 6th magnitude star, and then a
7th magnitude star. From 6 Coma, make your first move to the first 6th magnitude star,
which lies about 3/4 of a degree straight down.
Now move about another 3/4 of a degree this time to the lower right to that 7th magnitude
star I mentioned.
So now we’re going to do a leap of faith to the target galaxy, so make sure you can
get back to that star we’re on right now. Move down and slightly right a little over
a degree and you will see one and possibly two galaxies right away - these are M84 and
M86, both elliptical galaxies, with M86 being the lower and larger of the two. Now look
closely - in the same field just to the right of the two ellipticals, you may see an 11th
magnitude edge on galaxy - NGC 4388. Then look between that edge on and the two ellipticals
and you may spy a 12 magnitude elliptical, NGC 4387. Now if M84 and 86, were a pair of
eyes, and the edge on 4388 were a mouth, then you have a celestial Face with a nose - NGC
4387! This group is nicknamed, surprisingly, “The Face”. This image taken by the Canada
France Hawaii Telescope on Mauna Kea shows the four galaxies in amazing detail, and you
can see the group smiling at you.
The Face is situated at the top end of Markarian’s Chain. Now we’ll proceed on our Galaxy Hop
to our next target, known as “The Eyes”.
Star Hopping Target #2
Okay, let’s head downward even further into the Realm toward the Eyes Galaxies.
Center your eyepiece on M86 which is the lower of the brighter pair of elliptical galaxies,
then drift down to the lower left about a half degree, and you will run into a pair
of spiral galaxies. This pair was nicknamed "The Eyes" by the 19th-century observer L.
S. Copeland, because their likeness to a pair of eyes is emphasized by the fact that their
long axis were oriented in the same direction. The smaller of the pair is NGC 4435 which
shines at magnitude 10.9, and it’s generally seen as an oval with a bright core. The second
larger spiral is NGC 4438 which gleams a little brighter at magnitude 10.1. If you look closely
you might see its strange shape. It’s being deformed by the gravity of its close neighbor.
So lots more to see in Markarian’s chain - onward and downward we go!
Star Hopping Target #3
So we have the next pair of targets in our Galaxy hop lying just about 3/4 of a degree
to the lower left, so slowly slide your scope that way, and you'll pick up the small spiral
NGC 4443 at magnitude 11 and the elliptical NGC 4458 at magnitude 12. 4458 is smaller,
with a round shape, and is a bit fainter than 4443.
Next move about a half degree again to the lower left and you’ll see 10th magnitude
NGC 4473, another elliptical galaxy, so it will also appear generally round in shape.
Lastly, move about a half degree to the left and you will pick up 10th magnitude NGC 4477,
a spiral galaxy.
Okay, one more target if you’re so inclined. You’re here, right? So you might as well.
This will be a final reward to your trip down Markarian’s Chain. Move a degree to the
left and you'll see the beautiful spiral galaxy Messier 88, shining at a comparatively bright
magnitude 9.6. M 88 is one of the more rewarding galaxies in the Virgo cluster for smaller
scopes. It’s a very compact spiral set at an angle of 36° to our line of sight. It
looks just like a miniature Andromeda galaxy!
Phew! So wasn’t that exciting? You saw 11 galaxies in a period of just a few minutes.
If you use starcharts like Sky Safari here, you can easily make some side trips off the
chain to find even more galaxies. Just make sure you can move back to your last reference
point before you stray too far. Again, it’s easy to get lost in the Realm!
We started off from our guide post star 6 Comae Berenices then after hopping a few faint
star we located The Face, consisting on M84 & M86 for the eyes, NGC 4387 for the nose,
and NGC 4388 for the mouth, The we moved down and picked up NGC 4435 and 4438 known as The
Eyes, then we continued down, picking off four more fainter NGC galaxies, and finally
ended up at the gorgeous spiral “bonus” galaxy, Messier 88. Quite a ride, huh?
So that does it for this week’s episode. You can find the show notes on our website
at kpobservatory.org/SH019, where you can comment and leave any questions that you may
have. Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you next week to finish off our exploration
of the Realm of the Galaxies.
I’m Cassie, and I hope you've enjoyed star hopping around the Milky Way. We'll continue
to bring you these video astronomy tutorials every week on Thursday, and in their podcast
format on Fridays. They will be designed to help you find deep sky objects that are up
in the sky at the time we post them on the Internet.
The reason we create these video and podcasts is to help beginning amateur astronomers learn
the sky and get more enjoyment out of their telescopes and astronomy in general. If you
have any requests or suggestions of potential targets in the night sky that you would like
to see us present, just let us know down in the comment section below, or on our website
blog.
Don’t miss our free Field Notes for this episode, basically the script of the show,
with all the images and start charts we use for our star hopping activities. You can get
them for free at kpobservatory.org/FieldNotes.
If this is the first time you’re checking out Star Hopping, and if you found this video
useful, please consider Subscribing to our Channel by clicking the Big Yellow Button
down there, click the Thumbs Up on the video, and please share this tutorial out to your
friends who like looking at stars. Also, as I just mentioned, please feel free to leave
any question or comment below, and we will be sure to respond quickly.
Please follow KPO on Facebook, where we post all of our astrophotos and keep everyone informed
about upcoming astronomical events. We'd love to hear from you to discuss all this great
stuff up in the sky.
All the links to these places including our website kpobservatory.org, can be found below
in the Episode Notes as well.
And finally, if you feel this video provides you value, and if you'd like to see more,
please consider supporting us on Patreon, where for a small amount per video, you can
support our efforts and let us make even more great astronomy tutorials like this one.
So bye for now, and thank you for watching, and we'll see you next time on Star Hopping
with Kissimmee Park Observatory.