Sent:	Tuesday, May 8, 2012 12:49:47
From:	Erwin Matys (erwin@matys.at)
when we searched the internet a while ago, we realized that most maps of
the Virgo Cluster are rendered by sky charting software and fail to give
a meaningful impression of what to expect in the eyepiece. Our attempt
for a better solution is a photographic chart of the area centered on
Makarian's Chain. It was captured in April 2012 under the crisp skies of
La Palma island using a modified Canon EOS350D with a Zeiss Sonnar 135mm
lens on an Astrotrac tracker. The map was generated using the green
channel of a stack of 16 x 4min exposures and covers a large area of
about 9 x 6 degrees. The limiting magnitude of the finder chart is
around 16mag, galaxies down to a visual magnitude of 13mag are labeled.
The map (0.6MB PDF) can be downloaded here: 

http://www.project-nightflight.net/virgo_galaxy_cluster_map.pdf

Clear skies and happy galaxy hunting!
Erwin Matys
Vienna, Austria

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