The Realm of Galaxies - Constellations Coma Berenices and Virgo

Galaxies in the constellation Coma Berenices. 127mm Apo Refractor, Canon 600d DSLR guided with a QHYL-11. 6x5 minute exposures at ISO800. Meteor or space debris bottom right corner. Credits: George Roberts and Pip Stakkert

"Coma Berenices, Queen Berenices hair, is a constellation north of the constellation Virgo and east of Leo Major. The galaxy NGC 4477  marks the most northerly of a group of galaxies that run south into Virgo. These galaxies form the Virgo Cluster and run in a line known as Markarian's Chain. The galaxies in my image are over 55 million light years distant. A very long way away indeed!" - Kurt Thrust acting CEO and current Director of the Jodrell Plank Observatory

" A fantastic week for Einstein as the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration, an array of radio telescopes at various locations around the world, has directly imaged a black hole and its event horizon at a radio wavelength of 1.3 millimetres. For comparison 'green light' which is midway on the spectrum visible to the human eye has a wavelength of 0.00053 millimetres. The black hole is an absolute monster with a mass 4.3 million times that of our Sun.  It is located in the giant elliptical galaxy Messier 87 approximately 54 million light years distant from our Earth. M 87 is also known as NGC 4486 and Virgo A and is famous for having a plasma jet projecting from its central core. We hope the weather improves at the Jodrell Plank Observatory for us to image 'Virgo A' using the 127mm apo refractor and we also have a request lodged with the COAST Robotic Telescope on Mount Teide. Exciting times for astronomers and the late Albert who would have been pleased to know 'General Relativity' holds up' even under extreme duress at the event horizon!"  - Archie Mendes - visiting theoretical astronomer at the Jodrell Plank Observatory

Messier object 87 by the Hubble Space Telescope. This is the galactic core shown as a composite image of visible and infrared observations in order to resolve the blue plasma jet. The field of view is about 1.5 arc minutes across, the jet extends to about a third of an arc minute (or 20 arc seconds) with a width of about 2 arc seconds (absolute length 5 kly at a distance of 53 Mly Credit: NASA Hubble Space Telescope WikiSky

The Event Horizon Telescope, a planet-scale array of eight ground-based radio telescopes forged through international collaboration, captured this image of the supermassive black hole in the center of the galaxy M87 and its shadow. Credit: EHT Collaboration and National Science Foundation