Explanation: The Virgo Cluster of Galaxies is the closest cluster of galaxies to our Milky Way Galaxy. The Virgo Cluster is so close that it spans more than 5 degrees on the sky - about 10 times the angle made by a full Moon. With its heart lying about 70 million light years distant, the Virgo Cluster is the nearest cluster of galaxies, contains over 2,000 galaxies, and has a noticeable gravitational pull on the galaxies of the Local Group of Galaxies surrounding our Milky Way Galaxy. The cluster contains not only galaxies filled with stars but also gas so hot it glows in X-rays. Motions of galaxies in and around clusters indicate that they contain more dark matter than any visible matter we can see. Pictured above, the heart of the Virgo Cluster includes bright Messier galaxies such as Markarian's Eyes on the upper left, M86 just to the upper right of center, M84 on the far right, as well as spiral galaxy NGC 4388 at the bottom right.

The Virgo Cluster is extremely rich in member galaxies, with over 2000 large and small members. While most of them are very small and can only be detected with huge telescopes, there is still a very large number of promising targets for amateur astronomers, even with small telescopes, starting at 2 or 3 inch, or even binoculars; this fact is suggested already by the fact that Messier's catalog list 16 Virgo cluster members:Because of the huge gravity caused by the galaxy cluster's enormous mass, some of the Virgo Cluster members have been accelerated to high peculiar velocities, with respect to the cluster's center of mass, at least up to 1,600 km/sec. As the cluster is receding from us at only 1,100 km/sec, some of its members are moving toward us at considerably high blueshift rates, the highest measured for any extragalactic objects. Others happen to move into the direction away from us, and are thus receding at more than souble the velocity as the cluster. In the following, a list is given of extreme peculiar motions of Virgo Cluster member galaxies (from the Sky Catalog 2000); we give the radial velocity with respect to our Milky Way's Galactic Center