astronomical fuss

Markarian's Chain in the Virgo Galaxy Cluster

zAmbOni on flickr

The other night was clear, and Pete and I decided to take a crack at the Virgo Galaxy Cluster. It is a veritable snarl of galaxies, galaxies, in the constellation Virgo. Some of the galaxies are Messier objects, some are not. I've no doubt that many an innocent Messier aspirant has ventured into the cluster, never to be heard from again. The evening quickly evolved into a situation where I was driving (manning the telescope), and Pete was riding shotgun, navigating the star chart.

"See the three stars?"

"Yep."

"Take a hard right. Field of view entering from the three o'clock direction."

We made good progress. After finding about three M items, Pete said those were the only ones he'd ever seen there before. Any others we found would be new for him as well as me. We ended up finding all of them. There are about a dozen. Pete said that completed his journey through the Messier catalogue which consists of 110 celestial sights. He started his search when he was seven years old, out viewing the night sky with his father. It turned into a solemn and momentous  occasion. When I left, Pete was plugging away on the Herschel objects. There are about 400 of those.

We are meeting up with John & Ellen in Buffalo in May. John has asked me to bring along my telescope. He appears to be interested in finding out what all the astronomical fuss is about. I am happy to oblige.