The Virgo Cluster
The Virgo Cluster is spoken with dread for those doing a Messier Marathon. It isn’t that people are afraid they won’t get the galaxies, for the most part, that’s easy they say. The problem you face is getting too many galaxies. You see, the Virgo Cluster contains between 1,300 and 2,000 galaxies. With our modest intstruments we can’t see them all, but any decent sized telescope will show plenty of them under dark skies. My problem, of course, was a different one. I wasn’t using a decent sized instrument. I was using my Canon 15×50IS binoculars.
That chart is only part of the Virgo Cluster. But for a Messier Marathon you only need the bright ones, the ones that Messier himself saw.
I had been to Virgo before at the Winter Star Party, but I only went a little ways into it. I wanted to finish it off tonight.
I warmed up in Leo, letting my eyes dark adapt. I initiall failed to get M95, M96 and M105, so I went over to the Beehive Cluster and just looked around, dipping down into M67 while I was there. M67 is not quite the oldest open cluster, but according to Wikipedia it is one of the most studied. Once I had my fun there I went back to Leo and still failed for those there. So I went over to M65 and M66, got them, and then saw M95, M96 and M105. The last three were difficult still. My eyes probably needed a bit more time but I suspect that there may have been some haze in the sky also.
When I went into Virgo before I started at Denebola, in Leo, just because that was where my Messier sequence started. But when Ed Ting gave his talk at NHAS about doing Virgo, he suggested starting at Vindemiatrix, the patterns just worked better. I remember how hard it was in Florida to star hop from Denebola so I thought I’d give his path a try. And I’m glad I did. It was very easy to jump from Vindemiatrix to two nearby asterism up to the first galaxy, M60. (I wasn’t using Ed’s charts. I had already printed out the “zoomed” Virgo from the Sky and Telescope’s Pocket Atlas and drew the path in, and that path looked extremely helpful and it turned out was extremely helpful.)
M60 proved elusive at first and this had me worried. But I was able to grab it with averted vision, and a few minutes later with direct vision. Once I was there M59 and then M58 popped into view. I turned “left” and headed up to M90, which was quite difficult. I eventually looked around enough and found out that my “below” averted vision seemed to be the most sensitive. That’s certainly something to remember. (I read somewhere that each of us has a particular direction where our averted vision works best, mine seems to be when the dim object is below the point I’m looking at. Your eyes may vary.) M89 was slightly easier and I found M87 before I look at the charts. I was happy to see that I was right about that. Then I went over a tad to M86 and M84 which weren’t too hard at all.
Now I had to back track to get M91 and M88. Actually, I was back tracking all the time. Whenever I had to put my binoculars down to consult the chart, I always had to start at Vindemiatrix again! This isn’t as annoying as it sounds. It is really fast to star hop with binoculars and it does mean that I’ll eventually have the entire sequence memorized which will come in handy someday, well, just might come in handy. Ok, who am I really fooling?
Now M91 and M88 were certainly proving tough. I could get M88 with averted vision but M91. Well, lets mark that down as a fail. I was able to see the mag 10.3 star that is just next to it, but never could make out the non-stellar galaxy. I’ll certainly need to keep on trying but by this time I was getting cold.
I had no idea how to get up to M100. I could go from M88 or I guess I could go from M84 also. My chart had a line from M84 to M100 but the sky didn’t. The path from M88 looked easier so I took it. I spotted M100 right away even before I knew where the charts said it would be. It was probably the easiest of all the ones I found. M85 was almost as easy, then I retraced my steps past M100 to the easy M99 and then the I really had to struggle for M98. I only got that with averted and just barely got it also.
My chart had one more M in it, way down at the bottom off the “line” but it was surrounded by bright stars. M49 was an easy grab.
I made it! Well, almost made it. M91 eluded me, but I had mostly navigated the Virgo cluster. It turns out that I had already done a fair bit of this at the Winter Star Party so I only grabbed 7 new Messier objects. This brings my total to 95 sightings with the Canon 15×50IS binoculars.
I still need: M2, M5, M14, M15, M30, M57, M61, M64, M68, M72, M73, M76, M91 (grrrr….), M102 and M104. I see some easy ones and some hard ones on that list. M76 will likely be my last one. I tried for that in Florida, thought I had it, but now I’m not so sure. Its season is long gone now, I won’t be able to try again until the late summer or early fall, or I guess I could get up early some morning and try for it.
But the good news is, I have only 15 more to go and I will have seen all 110 Messier objects with my binoculars!