H/T Lana Duze We Are Watching You. Have you ever looked through your telescope and felt like you were being watched? The Eyes (also called Markarian’s Eyes) are two galaxies (NGC 4438 (left) and NGC 4435), about 52 million light-years away and some 100,000 light-years apart in the constellation Virgo. They are rather prominent in Markarian’s Chain, a string of galaxies in the central core of the Virgo Galaxy Cluster. NGC 4438, the larger galaxy, is thought to have once been a spiral galaxy that was strongly deformed by collisions in the relatively recent past. It has a highly distorted disk and long tidal tails. A lane of obscuring dust is visible just below its weak nucleus and young stars are visible to the left of its center. NGC 4435 is a compact barred lenticular galaxy with a bright core of more than 50% of its diameter, and has a relatively young stellar population on its central regions (age of 190 million years). It seems to be almost devoid of gas and dust, but does have a very faint extension in the opposite direction of NGC 4438. It appears completely free of any tidal disturbances. There is a debate about whether NGC 4435 and NGC 4438 are interacting.
Posted on: Sun, 31 Aug 2014 16:20:34 +0000
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