M66

The upper image of M66 was taken the same night as M53, with the same equipment, and was processed using the same programs. It is nearly 23 minutes of 8-second exposures. M66 is about 35 million light years away. We find it in the constellation Leo. It has two bright companions in the sky, M65 and NGC 3628.

The lower image is also M66, hard to see though it may be. The lower image is the first deep sky image I ever obtained, just over a year ago. I could not believe how lucky I was to see, actually, light from a galaxy on my screen. Light from this image traveled for 35 million years, or reached 35 million light-years across space, to fall on my receptors. What a marvelous event! Of course, the much more detailed image above shows that information about the shape of the dust lanes in M66 also traveled 35 million miles, and I am just as delighted to see those details and happy that my equipment can record and decode such information.

I post both images for comparison. I have learned a few things in the past year. Both images were taken with the same camera on an unguided mount.