I had the Margareta Westlund Telescope booked last night and just before I started my session Gary Imm posted an image of this spectacular collection of galaxies, so I rapidly changed plans and aimed at them. Gary's image was as usual accompanied by a very informative text, way above what I could possibly put together, so I just cite him here. I hope you do not mind Gary:
"This object is a trio of galaxies located 80 million light years away in the constellation of Virgo at a declination of +4 degrees. The data shows that all 3 galaxies in this trio are at a similar distance.
The largest galaxy is NGC 5566, with an apparent size of 6 arc-minutes and a diameter of 150,000 light years. This magnitude 10.5 barred spiral galaxy has broad sweeping arms and subtle but clearly visible dark dust lanes.
NGC 5566 has a yellowish tint, likely due to its age, in contrast to the bluish tint of its neighbor on the lower right, NGC 5569. The third galaxy, NGC 5560, has both colors - yellow in the core and blue in the arms.
Both NGC 5566 and NGC 5560 appear distorted due to the gravitational pull between the galaxies. The arms of both galaxies appear slightly warped. It is not clear to me whether the smallest galaxy is interacting with the other two, but literature sources say that all three galaxies are interacting.
I am surprised that I don't see any pinkish star formation areas anywhere amongst the trio. Such areas are typically found when galaxies are interacting."
Gary's comment about the lack of pinkish areas is supported by 45 min of Ha data that I collected, shown below but not included in the main image as it did not contribute more than noise. It shows that the very faint Ha emission is only present in and near the cores of the galaxies.
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