The Eyes (NGC 4435, NGC 4438)

clic for 36% size 1400 x 958 (255 kB)

Clic here for 60% size 2333x1596 (686 kB)

 

About this Image

The famous galaxy pair named "The Eyes" lies within the Virgo Cluster with its some 2000 member galaxies dominating our intergalactic neighborhood at a distance of 60 million light years;

These are part of the well known chain of galaxies Markarian's chain.
NGC 4438 houses a super massive black hole in its center. A bubble spanning 800 light years close to the center of this galaxy is shown by the Hubble Space Telescope.
The strange shape of this galaxy is caused by severe gravitational interaction with NGC 4435.

The distance to NGC4438 is 50 million light years. North is up;

Below you see a crop on the center of the above image in 40/80% size.

Literature:
Hubble close-up on the center of NGC 4438: 1.
Galex UV observations: 2.


clic for 80% size 1274 x 1314 (266 kB)



Technical Details
Optics

16" cassegrain in secondary focus at f/10

Mount MK-100 GEM
Camera SBIG STL-11000M at -20C, internal filter wheel, AO-L for L frames
Filters Astronomik LRGB
Date April 11-14, 2007.
Location Wildon/Austria
Sky Conditions mag 5.5 sky, FWHM 1.6-1.8" temperature 10 C
Exposure L:R:G:B = 480:180:120:180 minutes (30-minute sub-exposures).
Processing Image aquisition in Maxim DL 4.56, Preprocessing in CCDStack; Fitsliberator; Curves, high pass filter, unsharp mask, color balance in Photoshop;