Markarian's chain in Virgo

After a quick trip to Newington to 'scope out' the store setup for tomorrow night's class, I headed over to the Stratham Hill park for the darkest site around Portsmouth that I know of.

My goal was to explore the Virgo galaxies for the first time using the Telrad and starhopping with the standard Telrad charts, and my Pocket Sky Atlas. I used the XT8i with mostly the 24mm and 35mm Panoptic, and the 13 mm Hyperion.

Starting from Vindemiatrix (Epsilon Virginis) I found Rho Virginis, the center of a Y-shaped asterism. By using that as an "arrow" to take off in various directions, I found M58 and M60, then M89, then finally M84 and M86. The Milky Way is 100,000 L.Y. in diameter - these two galaxies are 50 million L.Y. away! No wonder they are pretty dim.

Then following the arc of Markarian's chain, I found the rest of the Markarian galaxies ending with the brighter M88. This was all based on recommendations from Cloudy Nights members - thanks!

I then spent about a half hour looking at M13 and then finding M81 and M82 without the COL assistance. This is very satisfying to get to know the sky this way.

Finally as I was packing up to leave, an enormously bright star rose above the trees in the SE. Of course it was Jupiter, seemingly bright enough to read by.

The plan for viewing after class tomorrow night will be Saturn and M13. If anyone can find anything else under the parking lot lights, that will be great.