Fascinating how an object so familiar to amateur astronomers holds such odd characteristics. Mike is brilliant at uncovering such wonderful information and current research. Good thing he likes Kiwi fruit! Thanks!
Such a thoughtful way to present us with interesting science - study objects first recognized hundreds of years ago. Speaking of long ago, M86 is currently in a kiwi fruit configuration. Galaxy shapes transform over time, even without interaction with colliding galaxies.
It is also called Markarian's Chain because there is a few galaxies near it in a curve. It is one of the few galaxies I can see with my 150mm reflector without several 30 second exposures. My scope is hand controlled so any exposures must be short because of the Earth's rotation would cause elongated stars if I took more than 30 seconds. Depending on magnification I cannot even take more than 10 seconds at 250x as it is moving too fast. I only use such high magnification to see eclipsing type double stars. Many stars you see at night like Polaris, the North Star is a double or triple star like Polaris is.
Well... Technically I can read your comment by the photons comming out of my phone. So in general photons are pretty convenient things if you want to observe something
Fascinating! Question for Professor Merrifield: does the motion of M86 appear to approach or exceed the escape velocity of the cluster? And if so, does that suggest that either it originated beyond the cluster, or that one component of the merger(s) that produced it did, to add the energy required to leave M86 on its way out?
The Kiwi Fruit Galaxy! Something my Kiwi friends should know about. I'm a Kiwi too! If you don't know what I mean, a person who is from New Zealand is referred to as a Kiwi. There are soooo many Kiwis. Here's the story of all the Kiwis: Humans, birds, fruits and galaxies. Originally the bird Kiwi was named because it makes a sound that sounds like it's saying kiwi. It's only found in New Zealand and so the people from New Zealand are known as Kiwis. New Zealanders, or Kiwis found a fruit to use as their main business. As New Zealand was the main exporter of Kiwi fruits, people called it Kiwi because it's from Kiwis. A galaxy looks like a Kiwi fruit and so it has been named Kiwi. Fact: players from New Zealand are also called Kiwis.
Prof. Mike, do you think this phenomenon of two possible orbit families could be somehow related to the stability of a rotating shape with three different axes? I've seen a few videos explaining how an object like that, say a smartphone or a book, can only stably rotate around the shortest and longest axes, and keeps flipping rotational direction when rotating about the middle one. I realize it's not one single object, but maybe the orbits of a large number of stars produce a similar effect?
I enjoy Mike's videos very much, though I haven't seen a video from Dr Gray in a while. I love Meghan's presentations. Any chance of another video from her please, Brady?
Does the stripped gas provide any hints of M86's rotation? The linked paper describes how the stripping indicates the path of the galaxy itself, but I didn't see any sampling done normal to that path to detect possible asymmetry due to uneven stripping on either side of candidate paths due to rotation (if that's even a thing).
