Even Messier with a Triplet

This is what’s called the Leo Triplet: M65, M66, and NGC 3628. Unsurprisingly, they are in the Constellation Leo.

They’re not too far visually from Markarian’s chain and the background here is also full of less spectacular galaxies. Just to pick one at random, IC 2792 in the bottom right corner is magnitude 17 and apparent size is .5X.3 arcminutes as opposed to M66, closest to it in the image which is magnitude 10 and 9X4 arcminutes. So M66 might be visible in binoculars but IC 2792 is hopeless. NGC3596 in the top left, visible as a faint fuzzy in my image is mag 12 and about 4X4 arcminutes.

I took 42 images of 75 seconds at 800 ISO with the Canon t3i through the William Optics Z61(360mm f/6). Stacked and processed in Siril.

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