The Realm Of Galaxies is a region of sky contained within the Bowl of Virgo that`s littered with beautiful galaxies.In this image you are looking into the heart of the Virgo Cluster of galaxies. To the left of the image is elliptical M106. This is one of the brighter members of the Virgo Cluster and a truly massive specimen. It`s located 60 million lightyears from Earth and is approaching us at a speed of 383 km/sec. Its visual appearance is that of a tightly wound spiral with smooth, bright spiral arms. It is believed that the only active star formation is taking place within the dark dust lanes near the center of the galaxy.
To the lower right of the image is an area of galaxies called Markarians `s Chain.Two galaxies NGC 4438 and NGC 4435 are known as The Eyes. Both are spirals and they appear to be elongated, giving the appearance of two alien eyes staring at you.

This is a wide-field shot of the western half of the remarkable galaxy cluster in the constellation Virgo.  If you look close, there are dozen's of  identifiable galaxies in this photograph.  

The entire Virgo cluster contains some 2000 galaxies and represents an example of the largest structural unit in the Universe.  It is gravitationally connected to the "Local Group" of galaxies of which our Milky Way is a member.  While currently receding from the Virgo cluster, our Local Group is experiencing a slowdown because of its enormous gravity and will eventually be pulled into it.

The middle of this photograph is the collection of galaxies known as Markarian's Chain.  The triangle of galaxies looking somewhat like a "face" at the lower right is anchored by the large linticular galaxy M86 with its close neighbor M84 to it's right.  Below this pair and forming the "mouth" of the face, is the edge-on spiral NGC 4388.  Above the "right eye" of the face and looking much like an "eyebrow" is another edge-on spiral, NGC 4402.  Moving towards the left in this conspicuous chain is the interacting pair of galaxies, NGC 4438 and NGC 4435.  Moving farther towards the left is the pair NGC 4461 and NGC 4458, followed by NGC 4473.  The chain is completed by the pair of NGC 4477 and NGC 4479.  

The large galaxy at the lower left is M87, the central galaxy in the Virgo Cluster.  It is also a huge galaxy (larger than our own Milky Way) with a diameter of 120,000 light years and a mass of several trillion suns.The galaxies of the Virgo Cluster lie at a distance of approximately 60 million light years. 

These images were captured on the 21st March 2010 with a Canon 40D DSLR and Stellarview 102ED Refractor @ f/ 5.6. 25 x 5mins. seperate images @ ISO 800 were captured, aligned and stacked in Nebulosity. Final processing done in Photoshop CS3.