Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Leo (Leo)  ·  Contains:  HD98388  ·  IC 2745  ·  Leo Triplet  ·  M 65  ·  M 66  ·  NGC 3623  ·  NGC 3627  ·  NGC 3628
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The Leo Triplet in LRGB, Cfosterstars
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The Leo Triplet in LRGB

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
The Leo Triplet in LRGB, Cfosterstars
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The Leo Triplet in LRGB

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This is a rare LRGB image for me. I am getting more into it as I have fixed issues with my flats corrections. I took this with my Orion 115mm EON APO and QHY268M camera. I used my new AI based Pixinsight processing flow. Please comment.

The Leo Triplet (also known as the M66 Group) is a small group of galaxies about 35 millionlight-years away in the constellationLeo. This galaxy group consists of the spiral galaxiesM65M66, and NGC 3628

Messier 65 (also known as NGC 3623) is an intermediate spiral galaxy about 35 million light-years away in the constellationLeo, within its highly equatorial southern half. The galaxy is low in dust and gas, and there is little star formation in it, although there has been some relatively recently in the arms. The ratio of old stars to new stars is correspondingly quite high. In most wavelengths it is quite uninteresting, though there is a radio source visible in the NVSS, offset from the core by about two arc-minutes. To the eye, M65's disk appears slightly warped, and its relatively recent burst of star formation is also suggestive of some external disturbance. Rots (1978) suggests that the two other galaxies in the Leo Triplet interacted with each other about 800 million years ago. 

Messier 66 or M66, also known as NGC 3627, is an intermediate spiral galaxy in the southern, equatorial half of Leo. It was discovered by French astronomer Charles Messier on 1 March 1780, who described it as "very long and very faint". M66 has a morphological classification of SABb, indicating a spiral shape with a weak bar feature and loosely wound arms. The isophotal axis ratio is 0.32, indicating that it is being viewed at an angle. M66 is receding from us with a heliocentric radial velocity of 696.3±12.7 km/s.[3] It lies 31[4] million light-years away and is about 95 thousand light-years across[11] with striking dust lanes and bright star clusters along sweeping spiral arms. Five supernovae have been observed in M66: SN 1973R (type IIP, mag. 14.5), SN 1989B (type Ia, mag. 13), SN 1997bs (Type IIn, mag. 17), SN 2009hd (Type II, mag. 15.8),  and SN 2016cok (Type IIP, mag. 16.6). SN 2016cok was discovered by the All Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae. Gravitational interaction from its past encounter with neighboring NGC 3628 has resulted in an extremely high central mass concentration; a high molecular to atomic mass ratio; and a resolved non-rotating clump of H I material apparently removed from one of the spiral arms. 

NGC 3628, also known as the Hamburger Galaxy or Sarah's Galaxy, is an unbarred spiral galaxy about 35 million light-years away in the constellation Leo. It was discovered by William Herschel in 1784. It has an approximately 300,000 light-years long tidal tail.

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The Leo Triplet in LRGB, Cfosterstars