Photo of the Week for April 22, 2016
One of the spring sky’s finest galaxy groupings is the Trio in Leo, which includes M65, M66 and NGC3628. To see them well, though, you’ll need a dark sky — the feeble glow from distant galaxies doesn’t stand up well against a wash of light-pollution. Of the three, M65 and M66 are the brightest, at magnitudes 10.1 and 9.6, respectively. They can be glimpsed in binoculars, but to add magnitude 10.4 NGC3628 to the scene, you’ll need a telescope.
This fine portrait of the Leo trio was captured by Haneytown, New Brunswick, imager Scott Champion. He recorded the galaxies with an Atik 383L+ monochromatic CCD camera mounted to an Explore Scientific 102-millimetre apochromatic refractor telescope (operating at f/5.6). The final image was shot through four different filters for a combined exposure of 3½ hours.
