Leo Triplet (Frank Alvaro)

Leo Triplet

The Leo Triplet, or the M66 Group, is a group of interacting spiral galaxies located in the northern constellation Leo. The group consists of the galaxies Messier 65, Messier 66 and NGC 3628, also known as the Hamburger Galaxy. The Leo Triplet lies at an approximate distance of 35 million light years from Earth. NGC 3628 appears edge-on, while M65 and M66 are inclined enough to reveal their spiral arms.

Messier 66 (at top of image), the largest and brightest member of the Leo Triplet, is roughly 95 light years across.

Messier 65 (left side of image) is an intermediate spiral galaxy, poor in dust and gas, and shows little evidence of star formation.

NGC 3628 is an unbarred spiral galaxy. Seen edge-on, the galaxy appears transected by a broad band of dust that stretches along its outer edge, hiding the young stars in the galaxy’s spiral arms.

The three galaxies in the M66 Group have all been affected by gravitational interactions with each other. This is evident in the deformed, drawn out spiral arms of M66 that are experiencing a high rate of star forming activity and in the warped, inflated disk of NGC 3628. With a prominent tidal tail consisting mainly of young blue stars, NGC 3628 seems to be the most affected of the three, while M65 appears to have suffered the least damage from the interaction. The tidal tail of NGC 3628 spans over 300,000 light years, but is very faint and does not always appear in images of the galaxy.

The disk of M65 appears a bit warped and there is evidence of a relatively recent burst of star forming activity within the galaxy, indicating that M65, too, is tidally interacting with the other galaxies in the M66 Group.

(messier-objects.com)

Australian Astrophotographers
Southern Hemisphere Astro
Skywatcher Esprit ED Super APO Triplet

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	9659398
PixInsight job	TMWDPNB26AMR2YBK6S3GZHWJ6FTXZFUB
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	11h19m59s.288
RA (top/left)	11h19m36s.559
RA (top/right)	11h22m17s.759
RA (bottom/right)	11h20m22s.212
RA (bottom/left)	11h17m41s.420

Dec (center)	+13°15′59″.99
Dec (top/left)	+12°42′31″.23
Dec (top/right)	+13°20′35″.25
Dec (bottom/right)	+13°49′33″.43
Dec (bottom/left)	+13°11′21″.52

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