Home → M 65 - M 66

Reply to comment

Submitted: Fri, 2014-05-09 21:23

M 65 - M 66

Messier 65 (also known as NGC 3623) is an intermediate spiral galaxy about 35 million light-years away in the constellation Leo. It was discovered by Charles Messier in 1780. M65, M66, and NGC 3628 comprise the famous Leo Triplet, a small group of galaxies.
M65 was discovered by Charles Messier and included in his Messier Objects list. However, William Henry Smyth accidentally attributed the discovery to Pierre Méchain in his popular 19th century astronomical work A Cycle of Celestial Objects (stating "They [M65 and M66] were pointed out by Méchain to Messier in 1780"). This error was in turn picked up by Kenneth Glyn Jones in Messier's Nebulae and Star Clusters. This has since ramified into a number of other books by a variety of authors.

Messier 66 (also known as NGC 3627) is an intermediate spiral galaxy about 36 million light-years away in the constellation Leo. It was discovered by Charles Messier in 1780. M66 is about 95 thousand light-years across with striking dust lanes and bright star clusters along sweeping spiral arms. As of 2015, four supernovae have been observed in M66.

M 65 - M 66

Reply

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
   __     _  _   
  / /_   | || |  
 | '_ \  | || |_ 
 | (_) | |__   _|
  \___/     |_|
Enter the code depicted in ASCII art style.