The Triplet is a group of galaxies in the haunches of the constellation Leo – the Lion. The three galaxies are Messier 65 and 66 (M65 & M66) and NGC 3628. The first two objects are spiral galaxies, and NGC 3628 is an edge-on spiral. The trio of galaxies are sufficiently close to one another that they exert tidal forces on each other. In high-resolution images, it is clear that M65 and M66 are distorting the galactic disk of NGC 3628.
The last time I made images of the Leo Triplet was two years ago. I had fitted my 130mm astrograph with a narrow-band quad band filter – not the best choice for galaxies. I accumulated about 11 hours of data for an image of lower quality than this one shot with a broad-band, light pollution filter.
The images below are from a composite of 161, 120-sec frames (5h 22min). The first shows all three galaxies (M65 above, M66 below, and NGC 3628 to the left of both). The subsequent images are severely cropped to show more detail in each of the three galaxies.
I would have loved to collect twice as much data for this project, but neither the weather nor the moon cooperated. Alas!
