Astronomy Picture of the Day - The Leo Trio

NASA ^ | 21 Mar, 2025 | Image Credit & Copyright: Rabeea Alkuwari

[MtnClimber]

Explanation: This popular group leaps into the early evening sky around the March equinox and the northern hemisphere spring. Famous as the Leo Triplet, the three magnificent galaxies found in the prominent constellation Leo gather here in one astronomical field of view. Crowd pleasers when imaged with even modest telescopes, they can be introduced individually as NGC 3628 (bottom left), M66 (middle right), and M65 (top center). All three are large spiral galaxies but tend to look dissimilar, because their galactic disks are tilted at different angles to our line of sight. NGC 3628, also known as the Hamburger Galaxy, is temptingly seen edge-on, with obscuring dust lanes cutting across its puffy galactic plane. The disks of M66 and M65 are both inclined enough to show off their spiral structure. Gravitational interactions between galaxies in the group have left telltale signs, including the tidal tails and warped, inflated disk of NGC 3628 and the drawn out spiral arms of M66. This gorgeous view of the region spans over 1 degree (two full moons) on the sky. Captured with a telescope from Sawda Natheel, Qatar, planet Earth, the frame covers over half a million light-years at the Leo Trio's estimated 30 million light-year distance.

[MtnClimber]

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For more detail go to the link and click on the image for a high definition image. You can then move the magnifying glass cursor then click to zoom in and click again to zoom out. When zoomed in you can scan by moving the side bars on the bottom and right side of the image.

[MtnClimber]

[MtnClimber]

Pinging the APOD list

🪐 🌟 🌌 🍔

[BenLurkin]

bttt

[Omnivore-Dan]

Light years away from each other, yet look so close in the pic. I wonder if they will eventually converge, like Andromeda and the Milky Way.

[SkyDancer]

Nice - made it my new background image.

[AFB-XYZ]

I have to either get my eyes checked soon, or read slower. For some unknown reason, I initially perceived the title as “The Loo Trio”. Heh. :-)

[Deaf and Discerning]

Frisbees?

[Conan the Librarian]

“Slightly” better than the shot of them I took the other night with my Dwarf 3 scope

[No name given]

Wow.

[telescope115]

Those little scopes are amazing. I know a few people who have them, and are really impressed with what they can do for their size. I gotta admit, if I could afford to buy another scope, I would seriously consider one.

The Leo Triplett is fun to look at thru the eyepiece. It’s a real thrill seeing them in one field of view.

[Conan the Librarian]

I am more of a fan of ‘old light’ and REALLY don’t like go-to for visual, but, the Dwarf 3 works great. We live on a sailboat and I don’t have room for my 12.5 inch dob (though I have a small 5” scope on-board)

You might look at the Dwarf 2. They were selling them at Sam’s club for $300. All you need is a good tripod and a little practice. You won’t get too much art out of either one, but, It’s pretty cool getting 15th mag galaxies and the like.

Hope to take it out on an island somewhere in the Bahamas soon and try it in really dark skies.

[telescope115]

I’’ve seen the Dwarf 2 at Walmart. I’m “old school” myself and don’t use a goto mount, even tho I have one. I’ve had it almost 25 years and still just polar align and observe. Losmandy w/Gemini 1 that I’ve never really gotten the hang of. Still, it serves me well to this day. I have a Stellarvue refractor as my main scope. I’m starting to get into astrophotography, lunar, solar, and planetary. Just getting my feet wet into that.

We’ve been on a sailboat once,Mon our honeymoon on Cape Cod in 1981. It truly was exciting.

Clear Skies, and Clear Sailing to you. 🙂⛵️🔭