A dusty beauty

NGC 3627, also known as Messier 66, i.e. it is the 66th object in the famous catalogue of nebulae by French astronomer Charles Messier (1730 - 1817). It is located in the constellation Leo (The Lion).

NGC 3627 is a beautiful spiral with a well-developed central bulge. It also displays large-scale dust lanes. Many regions of warm hydrogen gas are seen throughout the disc of this galaxy. The latter regions are being ionised by radiation from clusters of newborn stars. Very active star-formation is most likely also occurring in the nuclear regions of NGC 3627.

The galaxy forms, together with its neighbours M 65 and NGC 3628, the so-called "Leo Triplet" ; they are located at a distance of about 35 million light-years. M 66 is the largest of the three. Its spiral arms appear distorted and displaced above the main plane of the galaxy. The asymmetric appearance is most likely due to gravitational interaction with its neighbours.

This photo of the spiral galaxy M 66 (or NGC 3627) was obtained with the FORS1 and FORS2 multi-mode instruments (at VLT MELIPAL and YEPUN, respectively) on December 16-18, 2001. It is a composite of three exposures in different wavebands. North is towards upper left, West towards upper right.

Źródło:

ESO/P. Barthel

O zdjęciu

Identyfikator:eso0338c
Typ:Obserwacje
Data publikacji:19 grudnia 2003
Powiązane komunikaty:eso0338
Rozmiar:4961 x 4965 px

O obiekcie

Nazwa:Messier 66, NGC 3627
Typ:Local Universe : Galaxy : Type : Spiral
Odległość:35 milion lat świetlnych
Constellation:Leo
Kategoria:Galaxies

Formaty zdjęć

Pełen rozmiar
70,5 MB
Wielki JPEG
4,4 MB
JPEG do druku
4,9 MB

Powiększenie


Tapety

1024x768
185,1 KB
1280x1024
326,0 KB
1600x1200
523,0 KB
1920x1200
660,4 KB
2048x1536
890,7 KB

Współrzędne

Pozycja (RA):11 20 15.07
Pozycja (Dec):12° 59' 28.00"

Kolory i filtry

PasmoTeleskop
Optyczny
B
Very Large Telescope
Optyczny
V
Very Large Telescope
Optyczny
R
Very Large Telescope