From time to time I'll post some of my new photos without much regard for the learning aspect, here's my first time doing this. Last night, on the evening of April 19th I was able to get out under clear skies and photograph a dazzling trio of galaxies in the constellation Leo. If you look directly overhead on March, April and May evenings here in New England shortly after nightfall, you'll see a backwards question mark, that's the head of Leo, the lion. The constellations Leo and Virgo are home to countless galaxies, most of which are visible in small telescopes and some even in binoculars under clear dark skies. The following photograph is a composite of 4 10 minute exposures of "the Leo Trio" consisting of M66, M65 and NGC3627 (that's the one shaped like a hamburger). The photo was taken with a brand spankin new modified Canon 350d (aka digital rebel xt), my Takahashi E-160 and the Losmandy G-11 mount. There's also another component to these 10 minute exposures that I take called guiding, that's done electronically with a seperate ccd called an ST-4, I'm not going to get into that right now, that'll be a seperate post when I have a little more time. Anyway, click on the photo to see the larger version.
These three galaxies are gravitationally bound and are sometimes referred to as the "M66 group", but are part of the much larger super cluster called the Virgo cluster.
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