[M66]

Messier 66

[m66.jpg]

David Malin has obtained this beautiful image of M 66 with the 3.9-meter Anglo Australian Telescope. It is a composite of three images, taken with different emulsions and filters, thus sensitive for light of different colors, exposed as follows: Blue and Red: 27 minutes, Green: 22 minutes.

Messier 66 exhibits a remarkable central bulge. This galaxy shows several anomalies, deviations from "perfect" spiral structure, which can be observed in many galaxies, notably a crack in one of its spiral arms at the lower end of the bright central region and a wave-away of the spiral arm visible rightest in this image. This is very probably a result of its gravitational interactions with its neighbors M65 and NGC 3628.

This images is copyrighted by the Australian Astronomical Observatory; see their usage policy.

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    Last Modification: November 28, 1999