Monday, February 26, 2007

M95 & M96, Galaxies in Leo

I'm not going to win any awards for my deep space photography any time soon, but I'm happy to see anything at all.



Info from Starry Night Pro:
M95 and M96 are a fine pair of galaxies in Leo separated by a mere 42' and can be seen together in the same field with binoculars and telescopes under low magnification. Both are spiral galaxies with M96 being the brighter of the two. M95 has a bright core surrounded by a granular halo. In dark skies M95 might reveal hints of spiral structure and a bar extending from its centre region. Also nearby is the elliptical galaxy M105. Together, M95, M96 and M105 form the Leo Galaxy Group. The Hubble Space Telescope recently measured the distance to M95 using Cepheid variable stars, and used this distance measurement as one of the pieces of data in a new measurement of the age of the universe. The results of this study indicate that the universe is about 14 billion years old.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hey me either on the awards but I am still saying you took a heck of a shot!