Reason why I choose these spectacular pair of galaxies is because of their bright tidal tails. The tails are perhaps one of the easiest in the northern sky.
But let's start at the beginning. As often, the discoverer both galaxies was William Herschel in 1784. Interestingly the name "The Eyes" was founded in 1955 by the Amateur Astronomer Leland S. Copeland who wrote an article in the February edition of the magazine Sky and Telescope about Markarian's Chain and called the pair NGC 4435/4438 the "Eyes".
Vorontsov-Velyaminov and Arp (only for NGC 4438) also included the pair in their professional catalogs.
NGC 4435 itself seems to be free of tidal action for the first view but shows a long, very faint tail to the NW which could also be foregrounded galactic cirrus. The galaxy appears to be almost devoid of dust and gas because of a former collision.
In contrast and on even not so deep photographs NGC 4438 shows strong and bright tidal tails. Modern studies names as a collision partner not only NGC 4435 but Messier 86. Professional hydrogen emission maps shows connections between M 86 and NGC 4438 but even very deep amateur photographs shows H-Alpha bridges between all three partners.
Through the telescopes "The Eyes" are the center of Markarian's Chain and visible from small binoculars up. To my big surprise I could detect the tidal tail of NGC 4438 with my old 8-inch years ago. With the 27-inch the tail is brighter and more detailed but the real astonishing observation was through the 8-inch. But what could you see and from what aperture could you detect the faint tidal?
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