M65 / M66 / NGC 3628 - 2018 (Gary Imm)

M65 / M66 / NGC 3628 - 2018

This object is the famous trio of galaxies, located 35 million light years away in the constellation of Leo. All of these galaxies are about the size of our Milky Way. Each is well detailed and displays interesting characteristics.

NGC 3628 is the edge-on spiral galaxy on the left. This galaxy is most notable for the beautiful dust lane which bisects it. This broad equatorial band obscures the galaxy’s bright central region and hides most of the bright young stars in its spiral arms. Gravitational interactions with the two galaxies on the right are believed to be responsible for the extended flare and warp of this spiral's disk. The gravitational pull of these neighboring galaxies has most likely tipped the plane of NGC 3628 and made its central dust lane “wobbled” in appearance.

M66 is the face-on galaxy at lower right. While all of these galaxies exhibit prominent dust lanes sweeping along their broad spiral arms, M66 is particular interesting in the contrast between the pinkish hues of hydrogen gas in star forming regions and the bluish hues of the young blue star clusters. It also displays a slightly odd non-symmetric structure, likely due to gravitation interaction with the other nearby galaxies. Also note that, just to the left of the core of M66, there appears to be a bluish concentration of star clusters which may have been ripped out of the core.

M65 is the inclined galaxy at upper right. I find this galaxy fascinating because of the symmetric brightness undulations as you move left to right across the galaxy diameter. The dark lanes appear as six dark circles as you move across the disk, interrupted by the glowing core.

Final
Original
C

C

Description: Comparison to Original Arp Image

Uploaded: ...

The refractors!
Cloudy Nights
Arp's Peculiar Galaxies
ZWO ASI1600MM/QHY163M

Arp Catalog (Complete)
Brightest Galaxy Catalog (Complete)
Edge-on Galaxy Dust Band
Messier Catalog (Complete)
Seyfert Galaxies

	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
Promotions by Submitters When 3 distinct Submitters promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for Top Pick status. This requirement, in addition to anonymization of images and distribution to only a subset of them, prevents biases and ensures that the best images are selected.
Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	2040643
PixInsight job	XP2UQ0QCVRGPDATL1TFK0XEDVQQ6PQFC
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

RA (center)	11h19m56s.732
RA (top/left)	11h19m10s.520
RA (top/right)	11h18m05s.127
RA (bottom/right)	11h20m43s.189
RA (bottom/left)	11h21m48s.644

Dec (center)	+13°18′12″.73
Dec (top/left)	+13°49′25″.26
Dec (top/right)	+12°59′07″.70
Dec (bottom/right)	+12°46′59″.99
Dec (bottom/left)	+13°37′14″.46

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):