20
May
2022
The Leo Triplet is a triplet of the galaxies Messier 65, Messier 66 and NGC3628 (or also called “The Hamburger galaxy”).
This group of galaxies is located roughly ~35 Million light years away from earth, in the constellation of Leo. While Messier 66 and Messier 65 are spiral galaxies seen from a top-down perspective, NGC3628 is seen edge-on with its dust band going through the center, which is also what gave it its name “Hamburger Galaxy”.
Visible in the photo are also some fainter, very small and distant galaxies (annotated with PGC….).
A (incomplete) list of all the galaxies in this photo:
| Name | Luminosity [mag] | Distance form earth |
|---|---|---|
| Messier 65 | 9.6 | 40 Million Light Years |
| Messier 66 | 9.65 | 30 Million Light Years |
| NGC3628 | 10.42 | 33.5 Million Light Years |
| PGC1430824 | 12.51 | 1.165 Billion Light Years (z) |
| PGC1431922 | 13.85 | 1.75 Billion light Years (z) |
| PGC1430330 | ? | ? |
| PGC1437871 | 15.7 | 1.073 Billion light Years (z) |
| PGC1432894 | 16.67 | 695 Million light Years (z) |
| PGC1423398 | ? | ? |
| PGC1421317 | ? | ? |
Data source: SIMBAD (https://simbad.cds.unistra.fr/simbad)
The distance values with (z) were calculated through measured redshift using the expanding universe and Hubble’s
constant.