Full Res image crop, 1920pix wide, 1200 pix wide

The Leo Trio

The Leo Trio of galaxies lies in the constellation Leo. It consists of 3 galaxies, Messier 65, Messier 66 and NGC 3628. The galaxies lie near 36 million light years distant. NGC 3628 (top in the image) has a faint tidal tail (stars stripped from the galaxy due to an interaction) of stars which can be seen streaming off to the left hand side. M66 (lower left) is almost a face on spiral and shows striking dust lanes and blue star forming regions. M65 (lower right) is also a spiral galaxy with easy to see dust lanes. The above image is a combination of about 5hrs of exposure time through Luminance, Red, Green and Blue filters. It was taken at the 2018 Texas Star Party under extremely dark skies.

• Optics : Stellarvue SVQ86 refractor
• Mount: Paramount MyT
• Camera: SBIG STL 11K
• Filters: Custom Scientific 50mm LRGB filter set
• Exposure: LRGB 90:80:70:60
• Camera/Mount Control: The Sky X, CCD Autopilot
• Guiding: Unguided using Protrack
• Processing: PixInsight
• Location: Texas Star Party, Ft Davis, TX
• Date: May 2018