M65 & M66



About this image.

Messier 65 (M65) is a bright spiral galaxy of stars only 35 million light-years away in the constellation Leo. With very tightly wound spiral arms, a large central bulge, and well defined dust lanes, this galaxy is a member of a group of galaxies known as the Leo triplet. The faint blue smudges along the spiral arms of M65 are large clusters of bright, newly formed stars within the distant galaxy while the bright individual stars are foreground objects in our own Milky Way galaxy

M66, also a mere 35 million light-years away and about 100 thousand light-years across contains striking dust lanes and bright star clusters along sweeping spiral arms. The shape of M66, another member of the Leo Triplet of galaxies, has likely been influenced by  gravitational interactions with its neighborhood galaxies.

(Text taken from www.seds.org)
 

Equipment

Telescope:                 12.5" Ritchey Chretien by RC Optical Systems
Mount:                      Paramount ME by Software Bisque
Instrument:               STL11000M CCD Camera by SBIG with AO-L

Exposure:                  LRGB Image 4:1:1:1 hours
Capture Software:       CCDSOFT V5
Processing:                Maxim DL/CCD, Photoshop CS, CCDStack

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