This pair of Galaxies in Leo(M66/65) is a must do for Astrophotographers!
With there dusty lanes amongst the intricate spiral structure, to there subtle colours, and lying at a distance of 31 million LY and at about mag 10,there always a challenge.
It's interesting to note that the Leo trio was over looked by Messier who was busy observing a comet in 1773 which passed directly through the field on November the 2nd(must of been one hell of a comet!) consequently they were descovered by Mechain in March 1780.
I shot this through the ZS 110 with the SXV-H9C and guided on an AP600E mount out at Magellen Observatory 200km south of Sydney a couple of months back.
Exposures were 12 x 10 minutes and AA3 was used to capture,align&combine and CS2 for all post processing.
G'Day,
WOW thats a great shot M8,clear as a bell and very sharp love the colour as well,and like you say it must have been a Bright comet to miss them
Cheers
Arthur
A lovely image Louie, You have captured some excellent detail and colour.
The structure within the galaxies is superb.
I will definitely have to image these as well.
Nice image louie and good so see the detail in the galaxies,must be pretty happy with them ah!
I will have to take some shots of them with my setup,you have inspired me....now if those darn clouds could just go away...........
Great shot Louie. You didn't think to mosaic the NGC that forms the third sibling? I ended up with a few of the three this year, at last. Nice just the same, Gary
Leon,Ken,Arthur,Ric,Rob,Barb&Dave,H oughy,Gary,Mike,Jim,Duncan,H,Roger, David and Nick,thanks for the feedback guy's!
Gary,I can just fit the trio on my chip but havent had the chance to shoot them yet but ! I'll have a bigger chip camera soon anyway so I'll wait till then.
Ken,you really got great detail in that shot out of a web cam !well done,and as for my camera ?would you like my shirt with that too ? hahaha!
Rob,happy?me? never ! the seeing was crap ! the clouds rolled in and they are a bit low in the sky for my liking ! or maybe I'm just an old grump ! hahaha!