Here's a rather crowded looking field. Of course these galaxies are actually far apart from a human perspective, but in a telescope they seem to be rather close together. The main two galaxies in this image are M89 and M90; they make up part of the Virgo Cluster of Galaxies, which includes 16 Messier objects all within a very narrow region of the sky.
Also visible in this image are many other galaxies, for example IC 3583 near M90, and NGC 4531, which were too faint for Messier's little telescope.
I took this image about 10 days ago during our astrophotography special interest group (sig) star party at Steve's house. The wind had already started howling so the images didn't all come out nicely, but I got enough to show a few of the more prominent features of these galaxies. M90 shows spiral arms and a lack of blue star forming regions; M89 presents a classical elliptical galaxy shape.
Another "crowded field" is present in my own life these days. My work is in the usual near-madness phase that accompanies tax season each year; I'm blessed to have a fruitful business but it does require a lot of sacrifice. That includes less astronomy nights - we have had a run of beautiful clear, transparent, steady nights but I've been too exhausted to take advantage of them. However, I must confess that I did take a few days off last week to go on a 50-mile canoe trip with my family and the Scout troop. We had a great time, and I was able to do some naked eye observing in the dark skies in Northern Arizona. I observed numerous objects including Mira, M42, Saturn, the First Quarter Moon, and in the early morning, Jupiter (we got up really early to start each day's 17-mile leg of the trip). The highlight of the trip was seeing a huge bald eagle seated atop a hill.
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