Derby and District Astronomical Society



Messier 66 (NGC 3627)

Spiral Galaxy in Leo
RA 11h 20m 12s  Dec +13° 00' 00"

[Messier Index]



Dave Selfe captured the following image of M66 (left) and M65 on the 2nd April 2022. It is comprised of 95 x 60 second exposures taken with a ZWO ASI178MC camera through a Sky Watcher Esprit 100ED telescope.  Image Credit: Dave Selfe.




This image of the Leo Triplet was captured by Peter Branson on the 6th February 2022, and comprises 100 minutes total exposure (100x60s). The triplet comprises the galaxies M65 (upper right in this image), M66 (lower right) and NGC 3628 (the Hamburger Galaxy, at left). The camera used was a ZWO ASI533 cooled colour camera together with a 102mm TS Optics Photoline f7 telescope with a Hutech IDAS light pollution filter and field flattener, mounted on an NEQ6 mount. A filter wheel fitted with LRGBHa filters was used to capture these images (Luminance only). The images were stacked in Nebulosity, then PixInsight was used to remove background noise and lastly GIMPShop was used to produce the final image using levels and curves. Peter says - "The Leo Trio is a favourite astrophotography target and my new ZWO camera has given me my best image to date of this trio of galaxies."  Image Credit: Peter Branson.




M66 is one of the Leo Triplet of galaxies seen in this image taken by Chris Newsome on the 28th February 2006. M66 lies at the lower right of the triplet, which also includes M65 at the top and the edge on galaxy NGC 3628 at lower left. The image was taken with a Canon EOS 300D camera at the prime focus of a Skywatcher 80T refractor and comprises eight 150 second frames at 800 ASA, calibrated in Maxim DL and processed in CS2 using just RGB levels and curves. An Astronomik CLS filter was employed to reduce the sodium light pollution.  Image Credit: Chris Newsome.




Adrian Brown took the following image of the spiral galaxy M66 in Leo on the 14th May 2005. He used a monochrome ATK-2HS camera and a Celestron C11 scope. This is a stacked composite of twenty-five, forty-five second exposures and some detail in the spiral arms is starting to appear.  Image Credit: Adrian Brown.


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