The Virgo is the second largest constellation after Hydra. The constellation is very hard one to identify its shape because most of stars are fainter than third magnitude excepting Spica, alpha Virginis. And it's positioned far away from the milky way, so you can observe lots of galaxies over two thousand visible with medium-sized telescopes. The name of Spica with white color has meaning of "ear of wheat" carried by the goddess, and has an another name of the pearl star in Japan.
Myth
Second Cosmic Ray : Linking Through Jupiter
"These subjects are motivated by their emotions stemming from a desire to raise themselves to the heights, so that they can enjoy a unifying relationship with their Maker. They exemplify the passive, feminine quality that is in direct opposition to the positive, masculine assertion of the first ray subjects. They are strongly attracted to all things, whether people or concepts, that they feel are above them. Consequently, they often use love, the strongest human emotion, in their efforts at drawing themselves upwards. But wisdom is very important to these subjects also, so awareness or consciousness is a necessity in their relationships. Therefore, they usually play the more passive role. They are affectionate, friendly, kind, quiet, and often endowed with an attractive appearance and disposition.Galaxies In Virgo
NGC 4402
This three-color composite image of spiral galaxy NGC 4402 shows several key lines of evidence for the galaxy being stripped bare of its star-forming material by its violent ongoing encounter with the hot gas in the center of the Virgo galaxy cluster, as NGC 4402 falls into it. First, the galaxy’s dust disk appears to be truncated; second, the dusty disk appears to be “bowed” upward, bent by the wind of hot gas blowing from the southeast (from the lower left of the image); third, it appears that the light emitted by the north side of the stellar disk has been reddened and dimmed by dust that has been pushed up in front of it by the pressure of the cluster gas; and fourth, the linear filaments of dust to the south of its main disk are being “ablated,” or stripped away, in an outside-in fashion.
M49
Around the center of the constellation of Virgo, M49 is a member elliptic galaxy of The Virgo Cluster in where the galaxy is positioned at fairly southern part. You can appreciate the galaxy fairly clearly because of its brightness of 8.6. And diameter of the galaxy can be classed under considerably larger ones, only small telescopes can show you M49 as an elliptic light stretched toward north-south direction. M49 is estimated about 41 millions light years away.
M58
This image has captured a bared galaxy of M58 in the Virgo Cluster. You can find it about 6 degrees west of epsilon Vir. And there are two elliptic galaxies of M59 and M60 just east of M58. The galaxy shows you only dimmed nuclei by using of scopes, actually very fine two arms are coiled up in east-west direction. You can barely detect two lumps sticked to the nuclei in this image although taken under bad conditioned night. You can see M58 with M59 and M60 in low powered field of view, M58 is the most striking and brightest in the trio.
M59
These galaxies are positioned at the most eastern region of the Virgo Cluster in all member galaxies with Messier's numbers. You can catch these galaxies as two dimmed lights around five degrees west of epsilon Virginis. Galaxies on the right and left hand sides are M59 and M60 respectively.
M60
And M60 has small companion spiral galaxy of NGC4647 just north west of it. Both galaxies are simple elliptic, so they show you only nebula like images, and it can be realized that M59 is a bit stretched in north-south direction.
M61
There are 16 galaxies with Messier's numbers in Virgo Cluster in which some thousands of galaxies are contained. This M61 is a typical spiral positioned at the most southern region of the huge galactic group. Although there are few bright stars around the galaxy, you can search it from gamma Virginis and trace about 7.6 degrees northwest from the star. M61 has a bit small diameter of 6 arc minutes, but two clear arms can be detected on long exposed films. The galaxy has fairly low visual magnitude in spite of registered in the Messier's catalogue, so you cannot detect the spiral structure through telescopes with your own eyes. At most very dimmed light surrounding a stellar like nucleus will be shown.
M84
It is possilbe that M84 is a planetary system
M86
These elliptic galaxies are positioned around center of the Virgo Cluster paralleling only 17 arc minutes in interval. Right and left ones have the Messier's numbers of M84 and M86, respectively. Both look like simple dimmed lump of light without any striking structures.Those galaxies are positioned at the western edge of a famous galactic line, the Markarian's chain that is formed from ten or more galaxies. You can detect many faint galaxies around this field.
M87
M87 is a big elliptical galaxy positioned at the center of Virgo Cluster. You can find it around midway of Denebola, beta Leonis and epsilon Virginis. Only small scopes show you a round and dimmed light clearly. M87 has a real diameter of about 130 thousand light years, a bit larger than our Galaxy. And the galaxy is well known as a strong radio source of "Virgo A". Big telescopes can capture a huge jet structure stretching toward WNW with visible ray. It's considered that M87 is a very active galaxy, and a gigantic black hole in center is supplying the energy of its activity.
M88
This picture shows you M88, a northern galaxy of Virgo Cluster. The galaxy has a long axis of 7 arc minutes and 10.7 in visual brightness, a bit stretched nebula like light can be recognized with small telescopes. M88 is a typical spiral galaxy being a bit slant from edge-on, the picture shows you a dark lane surrounds the nucleus. And big telescopes can capture dimmed and fine arms coiled up.
M89
A small-sized elliptical around the central region of Virgo Cluster is M89. The galaxy is lying about 1.2 degrees apart from a radio galaxy of M87 in east. And it has an apparent diameter of about 5 arc minutes, telescopes can show you M89 as a dimmed light spot. Another spiral galaxy of M90 is positioned about 40 arc minutes north of the galaxy, you can detect those galaxies in same field of view with low magnifying power, and it may be interesting to compare the differences of those shapes.
M90
M90 is a member of Virgo Cluster just 40 arc minutes north of M89 in previous. The galaxy has an apparent shape of elliptic a bit stretched in north-south direction. Although M90 has a long axis of 10 arc minutes, it's fairly dimmed because of its brightness of 10. So it's difficult to resolve detailed structures with amateur telescopes. Actually M90 is a spiral galaxy classified as Sc type, a dark lane is striking around the central nucleus.
M104 (NGC4594)
M104 (NGC4594) can be found out in the south sky in spring, near the boundary between Virgo and Corvus. The name "Sombrero Nebula" comes from, you can understand easily, its shape that resembles a Mexican hat. A dark lane that crosses the center can be seen through medium sized scopes, I think it's one of interesting galaxies to appreciate. Distance is estimated about 65 million light years, and it has a diameter of 140 thousand light years, a little larger than that of our Galaxy. And additionally, the galaxy is well-known as one of the brightest radio galaxies in the heavens. If you have radio-detectable eyes, M104 will be seen equivalent to about 6th magnitude.
NGC4216
NGC4216 is a member galaxy of the Virgo Cluster, positioned almost just on a border between constellations of Virgo and Coma Berenices. You can find it about 6 degrees and 40 arc minutes ESE from Denebola, beta Leo. We're overlooking the galaxy from almost edge-on angle; clear central nucleus and dark lane being crossing can be recognized. The galaxy has an apparent thickness and length of 1.8 and 8 arc minutes respectively. The NGC4216 is one of easy-appreciating galaxies in Virgo Cluster in which uncountable galaxies are scattered. And it's the brightest one in all member galaxies without Messier's number. You can see other two fine edge-on galaxies in NE and SW of NGC4216. They have numbers of NGC4222 and NGC4206 respectively; both have brightness about 13 to 14th magnitudes.
NGC4536
This picture shows you a unique-shaped galaxy of NGC4536 lying around the southeastern edge of Virgo Cluster. The galaxy can be found about 4 degrees northwest of gamma Vir, Porrima. The galaxy has a long axis of 7 arc minutes and 11th magnitude brightness, it has two arms just like stretched out. NGC4536 has been classified in between spirals and bared galaxies. The galaxy is fairly large one but very faint, it's difficult to recognize its shape through telescopes with your own eyes.
NGC4567 And NGC4568
This image shows you two tiny spiral galaxies positioned around southern region of Virgo Cluster. Right one is NGC4567 and left one has a number of NGC4568. Both spirals are very dimmed and have brightness of about 12th magnitude. And apparent sizes are 3 or 4 arc minutes or so. This pair looks snuggling each other, this noticeable view has attracted our attention. These two galaxies are being close, it's considered that they're just colliding. We can observe other several examples of colliding galaxies in heavens like the Antennae in the constellation of Corvus. It's not rare case that plural galaxies have near miss or collision.
NGC4697
This set of two images show you two small galaxies in the southern region of Virgo. NGC4697 is positioned about 5.5 degrees west of theta Vir, and NGC4699 is found at about 3 degrees south from NGC4697. Although both galaxies have no striking characteristics, you can see that NGC4697 has an apparent shape of ellipse. The galaxy has a span of about 7 arc minutes in east west direction, you can appreciate this shape clearly through medium-sized telescopes.
NGC4699
NGC4699 looks like a simple round shape and has a diameter of a bit smaller than 4 arc minutes. There are plenty of galaxies around the constellations of Virgo and Corvus but almost all of them are faint difficult to appreciate with amateur telescopes. You can find out the Sombrero Galaxy (M104) only 3.5 degrees SSW of NGC4699
POX 186
Evidence of the galaxy's youthfulness can be seen in the burst of newborn stars and its disturbed shape. This evidence indicates that the galaxy, called POX 186, formed when two smaller clumps of gas and stars collided less than 100 million years ago (a relatively recent event in the universe's 13-billion-year history), triggering more star formation. Most large galaxies, such as our Milky Way, are thought to have formed the bulk of their stars billions of years ago.
POX 186 is a member of a class of galaxies called blue compact dwarfs because of its small size and its collection of hot blue stars. [The term "POX" is derived from the French "prism objectif," or objective prism, a device that astronomers place in front of a telescope to photograph spectra of all objects in its field of view.] POX 186 was discovered 20 years ago, but ground-based telescopes resolved few details of the galaxy's structure because it is so tiny. To probe the galaxy's complex structure, astronomers used the sharp vision of the Hubble telescope. The Hubble pictures reveal that the system is puny by galaxy standards, measuring only about 900 light-years across, and containing just 10 million stars. By contrast, our Milky Way is about 100,000 light-years across and contains more than 100 billion stars.
NGC 4261
Confirming the presence of yet another super-massive black hole in the universe, astronomers using the Hubble telescope have found unexpected mysteries. The black hole and an 800-light-year-wide, spiral-shaped disk of dust fueling it are slightly offset from the center of the host galaxy, NGC 4261.
Prior to Hubble observations, astronomers did not think dust was common in elliptical galaxies like NGC 4261, which were thought to have stopped making stars long ago due to the absence of the requisite raw materials: gas and dust. However, Hubble is showing that dust and dust disks are common in the centers of elliptical galaxies.
NGC 4526
Nice edge-on galaxy, located directly between two 7th magnitude stars, good sized, bright, elongated 8:1 east-west, modest core
NGC 4527
NGC 4527 is a spiral galaxy that is similar in shape to our nearest large neighbor, the Andromeda galaxy. However NGC 4527 is no closer than 20 times the distance to the Andromeda galaxy ( which is only 2 million light years away). The distance to this galaxy cannot be easily computed based on the expansion of the Universe since the galaxy itself has a high velocity within the Virgo Cluster of galaxies. A supernova occured in this galaxy in 1991. This could have helped nail down its distance by acting as a "standard candle." However, the light (curve) emitted by this particular stellar explosion was atypical and the distance to NGC 4527 still remains a bit uncertain.
This image shows you two member galaxies of the Virgo Cluster with an interval of 10 arc minutes lying at about 2.3 degrees west of epsilon Vir. An edge-on galaxy in left is NGC4762 and another right galaxy is NGC4754. The galaxy of NGC4762 is one of well-proportioned edge-on galaxies although smaller than a famous one of NGC4565. NGC4754 has a length of 9 arc minutes and a clear central bulge. This pair cannot be taken an attention because those are positioned in eastern edge of Virgo Cluster, maybe you can enjoy the pair of different shaped galaxies with an interest.
QSO 3C273
I'd like to show you probably one of most distant objects can be captured with amateur telescopes. This field shows you around north west of gamma Vir, Porrima, which is one of most beautiful double stars in spring skies. An arrow indicates a deep-deep sky object of the "Quasar (QSO)". This word is an abbreviation of the "Quasi-stellar object". Almost all of quasars show the red shift over 90% of light velocity; this fact tells us that quasars must be over some billions light years away. The quasar "3C273" was discovered at the first time and has a visual magnitude of 12.8, it's the brightest in all quasars. Distance from the Galaxy is estimated about 2.5 billion light years. It's considered that quasars are emitting gigantic energy because they're extremely bright in spite of their stupendous distance. Their quantities of emitting energy is imagined about some thousands or some ten thousands times of that of whole of our Galaxy. Some astronomers have proposed that they may be "eggs" of very active galaxies formed in the early of universe's history. But we don't know what they really are yet, one of greatest mysteries in contemporary astronomy.
Planetary Destinations In Virgo
PSR 1257+12
PSR 1257+12 is a millisecond pulsar about a thousand light years from the sun in the direction of Virgo. It is one of nine isolated millisecond pulsars known in the disk of the galaxy. In 1991, precise measurements of the timing of PSR 1257+12's pulses indicated that the pulsar's motion was being affected by the presence of at least two Earth mass planets. Announced four years before the discovery of a planet around 51 Pegasi, this was the first serious claim of an extrasolar planet. As the planets had been discovered orbiting a pulsar rather than a sun-like star, the discovery took astronomers by surprise.
In the months and years that followed, other pulsar planets were announced, but all were retracted as their signals were found to be noise or due to the orbit of the Earth. The planets of PSR 1257+12, however, could not be explained away so easily. It seemed that they did, in fact, exist.
In 1994, further observations indicated the existence of a third inner planet with a mass about that of the moon. Then, in 1996, a fourth, weaker, signal was found, indicating a Saturn mass planet further out.
In 1997, the inner planet claim was questioned. Its orbital period of about 25 days closely matched the rotational period of the sun. It was reasoned that the apparent motion of the pulsar was actually due to the modulation of the solar wind in that direction. However, if this was the case, similar signals would be seen in other millisecond pulsars, but such signals have not been found. Additionally, the oscillation of PSR 1257+12 does not change with the radio frequency it is observed in as would be expected if the oscillation was caused by solar plasma. So, it appears, the inner planet really exists as well.
Interestingly, the claim of a fourth planet was withdrawn in 2002. A strong signal does exist with a three year period, but only when observed at 430 MHz. A planet would cause the pulsar to oscillate at all frequencies. But, something must be orbiting the pulsar to cause the signal at 430 MHz. It was speculated that a planetoid or comet one fifth the mass of Pluto might account for the observations. Such an object would be ablated by radiation from the pulsar, forming a coma that would be detectable at 430 MHz, but would be too small for it's gravity to otherwise affect the pulsar.
In 2004 an alternative to the comet theory was proposed. Two clouds of ionized gas orbiting 4 AU from the pulsar might better fit the observations. Each cloud would have a seven year orbit, but with two clouds, the signal would appear to oscillate in half that time, three and a half years. The two clouds might be held in the L4 and L5 Lagrange points of a large asteroid and might contain smaller asteroids as well. Instead of a comet, PSR 1257+12 may host an asteroid belt.
HD 106252 (G0 V)
Parent Star: HD 106252 (G0 V) in the constellation of Virgo is located at a distance of 122.11 Light Years from our Solar system Co-ordinates of Right Ascension: 12 13 29.5093 & Declination: 10 02 29.898. The apparent Magnitude of the star is 7.36. The Inner Edge of Habitability Zone is 0.55 AU & the Outer Edge of Habitability Zone: 1.73 AU and the estimated stellar lifespan of the star is 8638 million years . Orbiting around HD 106252 is planet HD 106252 b the planet is believed to be a Water Cloud Jovian, Eccentric, planet and its exitence has been confirmed. The planets appearance is White water ice clouds and the planet passes through the edge of Habitability Zone at Mean Orbital Distance estimated radius of the planet is 1.026 Jupiters 1. The planet Orbits around the star every 1500 ± 28 Days and was discovered by Michel Mayor, Dominique Naef, Francesco Pepe, Didier Queloz, Nuno C. Santos, Stephane Udry, Michel Burnet in 2001.
HD 114783 (K0 V)
Parent Star: HD 114783 (K0 V) in the constellation of Virgo is located at a distance of 71.75 Light Years from our Solar system Co-ordinates of Right Ascension: 13 12 43.7860 & Declination: -02 15 54.143. The apparent Magnitude of the star is 7.57. The Inner Edge of Habitability Zone is 0.31 AU & the Outer Edge of Habitability Zone: 0.97 AU and the estimated stellar lifespan of the star is 12842 million years. Orbiting around HD 114783 is planet HD 114783 b the planet is believed to be a Water Cloud Jovian planet and its exitence has been confirmed. The planets appearance is White water ice clouds and the planet is out sided the Habitability Zone. Estimated radius of the planet is 0.996 Jupiters 1 . The planet Orbits around the star every 501 Days and was discovered by Vogt S., Butler P., Marcy G., Fischer D., Pourbaix D., Apps K., & Laughlin G in 2001.
HD 130322 (K0 V)
Parent Star: HD 130322 (K0 V) in the constellation of Virgo is located at a distance of 97.06 Light Years from our Solar system Co-ordinates of Right Ascension: 14 47 32.73 & Declination: -00 16 53.3. The apparent Magnitude of the star is 8.04. The Inner Edge of Habitability Zone is 0.41 AU & the Outer Edge of Habitability Zone: 1.28 AU and the estimated stellar lifespan of the star is 820282 million years. Orbiting around HD 130322 is planet HD 130322 b the planet is believed to be a Clarified Jovian planet and its exitence has been confirmed. The planets appearance is Blue and cloudless and the planet is not within the Habitability Zone at Mean Orbital Distance of 0.088 AU. The estimated radius of the planet is 1.103 Jupiters 1. The planet Orbits around the star every 10.724 Days and was discovered by Udry S., Mayor M., Naef D., Pepe F., Queloz D., Santos N., Burnet M. in 1999.
Parent Star: 70 Virginis (HD 117176)(G4V) in the constellation of Virgo is located at a distance of 78 Light Years from our Solar system Co-ordinates of Right Ascension: 13 28 26.541 & Declination: 13 47 12.43. The apparent Magnitude of the star is 4.97. The Inner Edge of Habitability Zone is 0.87 AU & the Outer Edge of Habitability Zone: 2.74 AU and the estimated stellar lifespan of the star is 87513 million years. Orbiting around HD 117176 is planet HD 117176 b the planet is believed to be a Clarified Jovian, Eccentric and its exitence has been confirmed. The planets appearance is Blue and cloudless and the planet is not within the Habitability Zone at Mean Orbital Distance of 0.48 AU. The estimated radius of the planet is 1.011 Jupiters 1. The planet Orbits around the star every 116.689 Days and was discovered by G.Marcy and P.Butler. in 1996.
