I captured the leo triplet from my backyard observatory in galaxy season

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]I have just fitted the reducer to my spree 120. This is going to give me the perfect framing for my target tonight. I am going to be shooting the famous Leo Triplet. It's three galaxies in one frame, 35 million light years away from us and millions of light years apart.

[00:00:18]>> [music] >> Hi and welcome to the channel. So, it's galaxy season and I'm going to be shooting the Leo Triplet with this rig here and I'm going to be shooting chain of galaxies with this rig [music] here.

[00:00:32]So, we've got some strong winds forecast for tonight and I'm not going to take any chances. I'm going to put the clamps on my roof just to be on the safe side.

[00:00:40]Quite easy, just lift them up, clamp it down. That's done. So, we've got some over here.

[00:00:48]Just get that on.

[00:00:52]There you go.

[00:00:53]There, that's all it takes.

[00:00:55]This literally done in seconds.

[00:00:59]And if we get any really strong winds, I haven't got to worry about the roof disappearing down the road. Not that it will cuz it's quite heavy, but [music] it's just a little bit of peace of mind.

[00:01:07]So, anyway, I must remember to take the clamps off before I try and image.

[00:01:12]I forgot on one occasion and it didn't end well. I had to get a new clamp cuz I've actually bent it. Luckily, it didn't burn [music] the motor out, but um this is worth doing. Just remember, take them off before you open the roof.

[00:01:28]So, we have another clear sky.

[00:01:31]I'm going to make the most of it and get both of these rigs running.

[00:01:41]So, I've been keeping this rig all together minus the weights, obviously, so I can carry it.

[00:01:48]But, it's pretty good. It's nice and level here, so I know when it sits here pointing to north that it's going to be level because I set the feet to level anyway.

[00:01:59]And this patio is fairly good.

[00:02:01]So, all I have to do, plug it in and away we go.

[00:02:06]I'm running the ASIair Plus with this rig.

[00:02:09]The power box is actually the SVBONY SV241 and this seems to be working nicely.

[00:02:14]It's running everything. I've got two dew straps on here.

[00:02:18]Um electronic focuser.

[00:02:21]Powers the mount. So, everything is working just fine. Right, so in here we have the a spree 120 which is reduced down to 650 mil and this is sitting on the EQ6-R Pro mount.

[00:02:37]And I have the 2600 mono camera with any of filters. It's being run by the Mele Quieter 3 mini PC and I've got the Sky-Watcher Evo guide guide scope and this being powered by the Pegasus power box advance. So, this is the obsy rig and as soon as it's dark, I'm going to get back onto the Leo Triplet. So, this is my little Arduino which is controlling the roof. This is connected to the mini PC and it basically controls this motor here.

[00:03:11]There's a magnet up there. You can just see that magnet.

[00:03:16]So, I've stuck in the top of the wall here another magnet and this top one here you can see, this one here.

[00:03:24]When they connect, that's when it stops the roof, so it stops in this position.

[00:03:29]And there's another magnet on the other end.

[00:03:33]Just show you that magnet.

[00:03:35]So, it's on that bar there. So, when that lines up with another magnet inside, then that's when it tells the roof to stop.

[00:03:44]So, it knows where it is.

[00:03:47]That's my weather station. That's the Lunatic Astro.

[00:03:51]And as you can see, there's no movement at all in that. So, there's no wind.

[00:03:56]When it's dark enough, that roof will open and this rig will be working as well. There'll be two rigs working here tonight.

[00:04:06]>> [music] [music] >> Okay then, so let's put all of the stacked images into PixInsight and see what we get. I am looking forward to seeing the final results, but I must say I do like what I've [music] seen so far.

[00:04:40]>> [music] >> The Leo Triplet is a really nice group of three spiral galaxies. We have M65, M66 and NGC 3628.

[00:04:55]They're all roughly about 35 million light years away and they're actually interacting with each other gravitationally, which is why they don't look perfectly neat and symmetrical.

[00:05:05]M66, for example, is slightly stretched and [music] distorted. That's from past interactions with the others. And then NGC 3628, the one edge-on, has that thick dark dust lane running straight through it. People sometimes call it the Hamburger Galaxy for obvious reasons.

[00:05:24]But, the really interesting bit is that there's actually a huge tidal tail of stars being pulled out of NGC 3628, [music] which is roughly 300,000 light years long. It's just incredibly faint, so it takes a lot of exposure time to bring it out. So, even though it looks like a simple group of three galaxies, there's actually quite a lot of chaos going on in there.

[00:05:48]So, the Markarian's Chain, on the other hand, is a completely different scale.

[00:05:51]What you're looking at here isn't just a small group, it's part of the Virgo Cluster, which contains [music] thousands of galaxies.

[00:06:00]Markarian's Chain is this curved line of galaxies running through the cluster and it includes some of the brighter ones like M84, M86. All around them, there are loads of smaller, fainter galaxies scattered everywhere.

[00:06:16]The crazy thing is, in a single frame, you're not just capturing one target, you're picking up dozens, sometimes even hundreds of galaxies all at slightly different distances. But, this is less about one object and more about just how [music] densely packed that region of the universe actually is.

[00:06:44]>> [music] [music] >> So, on my next video, I'll be taking this reducer off and I'll be going back to the native focal length of 840 [music] mil and I'll be going for some of those slightly smaller galaxies using the crop factor on the APS-C sized 2600 camera [music] here. With 840 mil, I'll be able to crop in a little bit further and get some of those smaller galaxies. So, stay [music] tuned for that and I look forward to seeing you on the next video and I wish you all clear skies.

[00:08:29]>> [music]