It’s been a while.

My wife, Michelina, and I purchased a home high on a cliff in Rochester, Minnesota a month ago. We have been bouncing back and forth getting our current home—My daughter, Courtney, calls it Home No. 1—ready to sell. Once it is sold, we’ll be able to move into Home No. 2, which will automatically become Home No. 1 forever after.

So we’ve been busy. This spring it’s been mostly cloudy in these parts before Midnight. Now, six weeks before the summer solstice, the length of the night sky is shrinking like George Costanza just out of the pool.

On the 9th evening of this month, we finally got a break in the cloud patterns. I ventured out five miles west of town to shoot Leo’s Trio: M65, M66 and NGC 3628.

Most SeeStar users refer to this trio of galaxies as “Leo’s Triplett.” It sort of sounds pretentious, like we’re all sipping tea from tiny cups with our pinky’s in the air chatting about the scandalous goings on in the Leo family two towns over. Leo’s Trio is easier to say; slides right out of the lips. The trio of galaxies in Leo was informally introduced that way to me way back when by Willy Groebner, a notable astronomer who lives in New Ulm, Minnesota.

The Three Galaxies

M66 is the main story of the three, in my opinion. In Burham’s Celestial Handbook, the author cites the observations of 130 years ago, when photographic exposures were first being made of twinkling things overhead. “Isaac Roberts, on plates made with his 20-inch reflector in the 1890’s, described it as spiral ‘with a well-defined stellar nucleus, forming the pole of the convolutions, in which I have counted 14 nebulous star-like condensations.’”

M66, the galaxy on the lower left of my 60-minute exposure, is known for rapid star formation, supernovas and asymmetric formations within its huge boundaries. Those spiral deformations are believed to be caused by the unrelenting gravitational pull within its boundaries and from the weak but relentless tugs of the other two galaxies of the trio. At magnitude 8.9, M66 is about 100,000 light years wide and 35 million light years distant.

In the lower right of the photo is M65. We view it nearly edge on, but we can see the undercarriage of the operation as it is tilted 14 degrees to our plane of view. Though M65 and M66 made Messier’s catalog, he did not discover them. According to Burnham, that honor goes to P.Mechain in March 1780; it seems that Messier’s Comet of 1773 passed directly through the field on November 2, 1773, but the two galaxies were not noted by that diligent observer; Mechain theorized that Messier “no doubt missed them because of the light of the comet.”

Interesting stuff. Like M66, the sister galaxy is also about 35 million light years distant but is dimmer from our point of view with an apparent magnitude of 10.8. M65 is dimmer because we see less of it.

If you like dust lanes, NGC 3628 is at the top of the photo and is near the top of most lists. We see this marvelous concentration of dust and light edge on. I love a great dust lane. NGC 3628’s dust stretches for tens of thousands of light years. It’s about the same distance from us as the other two members of the trio, and features visible tidal forces warping its body, and star streams stretch across 300,000 light years toward its stellar siblings. M65 and M66 just can’t get enough of NGC 3628–they want all of it within their systems.

Could all three galaxies converge into one massive system of stars? It’d be a peach of a show.

At magnitude 9.5, NGC 3628 is known by a few bubble gum names invented by imaginative amateurs. All three galaxies began to become galaxies 13.6 billion years ago, way before elements of our sun became a first generation star, let alone achieving second generation status it has currently.

Unveiling the Veils

I awoke after three hours sleep on Monday, May 11. I planned to write this missive before heading to Milwaukee today, and once up at 2 a.m. I could not return to dreamland. I took a peek out of the window and saw stars. It took me 10 minutes to set the scope up and lock it in on the Western Veil Nebula.

To the right, the Western part of the Veil is a one hour SeeStar S50 exposure. The reason for the nebula’s name is self-evident. It is one of the most beautiful things in the night sky.

Not to be outdone is the eastern edge of the Veil. The exposure to the left is a half an hour, cut short by the coming dawn.

Thank you for reading. Share with your friends. Keep looking up.