Night Eighteen - Markarian's Chain

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This is a string of galaxies in the constellation Virgo. M84, M86, and M87 are the largest galaxies of the group, cataloged by Charles Messier. The galaxies may appear small, but each of them contains more than 400 billion stars or more. Messier was a comet hunter who lived in the 1700's. If you are the first to discover a new comet, you get to name it. Messier would name the latest comet after the King's newest girlfriend and would then in exchange recieve a nice gold token from the King. Today we look at those fuzzy objects that Messier discovered and realize that they are a mix of nebulae and galaxies that we can resolve with our more powerful modern telescopes.

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