NGC 3628 Galaxy - Leo

Object Data: NGC 3628 is a mag 9.5 edge-on spiral galaxy in the constellation of Leo. Its bizarre and somewhat 'alien' appearance is due to strong gravitional interaction with neighbouring galaxies M65 and M66, part of the Leo Trio visible as a complete group in this image. NGC 3628 does not have an 'M' number as it was too faint to have been spotted in Messier's small telescopes - it was discovered by William Herschel on April 8, 1784 and cataloged by him as H V.8. Date: 15/03/2007 Location: Southern France Conditions: Calm, moderate dew, transparency=7, seeing=7 Optics: RCOS 12.5" Ritchey-Chretien working at f/9 Mount: AP 900 GTO on Portable Pier Camera: SBIG ST-8E / CFW-8 Guiding: Integral ST-8E autoguider Exposure: LRGB: Luminance: 8x 20 minutes; RGB: 2x 20:20:32 minutes binned 2x2 Processing: Image acquisition and initial processing using Maxim DL, subsequent processing in RegiStar and Photoshop. Notes: Seeing and transparency quite poor. There was a run of four nights with almost identical conditions, but at least it enabled images to be acquired on all four nights.