Virgo Galaxy Cluster

Object Type: Galaxy
Scope: C-9.25"; Exposure 60 minutes.

The Virgo Cluster is the nearest large cluster of galaxies, centered about 54 million light-years away in Virgo and containing on the order of 1,300 (perhaps up to 2,000) galaxies. It forms the heart of the larger Virgo Supercluster, of which our own Local Group is an outlying member; the cluster's enormous gravity tugs on the Local Group in what astronomers call the Virgocentric flow. Its brightest member is the giant elliptical galaxy Messier 87, home to the supermassive black hole first imaged by the Event Horizon Telescope in 2019.