The Leo Triplett

Last night I was out at the Hallam Observatory. The image below was captured with the 111 mm refractor telescope (equivalent to a 777 mm lens at f7).  This group of three galaxies is called the M66 group or the Leo Triplett and consists of the Messier objects M65 (NGC 3623) and M66 (NGC 3627) as well as the edge-on spiral galaxy NGC 3628.  

All the stars we see at night  (at least here in Canada) are part of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, although if you look carefully in the summer you can see the faint smudge which is the Andromeda Galaxy.  The Leo Triplett is much more distant,  the light from these galaxies took 35,000,000 years to reach my camera sensor!