Special weekend is ahead of us, and it is a perfect time to dedicate this post to the one man who has been patiently waiting or 4-5 months for it, @FknMayhem. Formula 1 is back at Albert Park - Australian GP, and we will be happy this weekend. For this post he blindly chose this intriguing spiral galaxy M66.
Messier 66 (also known as NGC 3627) is an intermediate asymmetrical spiral galaxy in the constellation Leo and it is a part of Leo triplet (of galaxies). Beside M66 Leo triplet contains M65 and NGC 3628. M66 and M65 were discovered by Charles Messier at the same night in 1780, while NGC 3628 was discovered by William Herschel in 1784.
This spiral galaxy is 36 million light-years away from Earth, and has a diameter of about 95 thousand light-years with the long and intricate dust lanes laying in the galactic plane and open clusters, containing hot young stars, along spiral arms. The galaxy is estimated to contain about 200 billion stars and up to date four supernovae have been observed (SN 1973R, SN 1989B, SN 1997bs and SN 2009hd). Displacement of the nucleus and difference between spiral arms in this galaxy is probably caused by tidal gravitational pulls in interactions with triplet companions M65 and NGC 3628.
In the northern hemisphere the Leo triplet is best seen in spring (March, April and May). M66 and M65 can be spotted even with binoculars as fuzzy patches of light or with a small telescope which will reveal a thin oval speck of light with a brighter center.
To find this galaxy, you need to look up to the eastern part of Leo. This zodiac constellation is relatively large and bright and with a little imagination you can see the Lion that it is supposed to represent. You can easily find it by tracing the direction from Dubhe and Merak from the Big Dipper which we explained how to find in the previous posts.
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So long and thanks for all the fish!