Markarian's Chain

 Markarian's Chain is a galactic “archipelago” that forms part of the Virgo Cluster. Messier 84 and 86 were discovered by Charles Messier, and the remainder were discovered by William Herschel. The chain is named for Benjamin Markarian, an astrophysicist who discovered their common motion. I’ve posted two images. The first is the result of only 14 minutes of integration (7 second subs at zero gain and no binning) with the DS10C+L-Pro filter and RASA 8. I used this image for the astrometry annotation. The second image is a 70 minute integration (same settings as above), but a smaller field due to the meridian flip that occurred after 14 minutes. The NINA imaging software does not work well with the CEM 70 on meridian flips and it causes problems by moving the scope in random directions after the flip. I thought I had prevented this issue, but NINA is persistent and managed to move the scope a small amount after the flip. It also disabled PhD2 and dithering, so this second image has some walking noise as a consequence. I find it interesting that the actual gain in picture quality for 70 minutes vs 14 is quite small (click and zoom), although this may not be the case for larger targets.

Here is the 14 minute integration:

Here is the 70 minute integration:

Here is the astrometry image: