Messier 66(CDK24)

Messier 66  Big, beautiful spiral galaxy Messier 66 lies a mere 35 million light-years away. The gorgeous island universe about 100 thousand light-years across, similar in size to the Milky Way. This view from the Planewave 24″ telescope spans a region about 160,000 light-years wide . It shows the galaxy’s disk with faint diffuse spiral arms above and to the left. Surrounding its bright core, the likely home of a supermassive black hole, obscuring dust lanes and young, blue star clusters sweep along spiral arms dotted with red star forming regions. Messier 66, also known as NGC 3627, is the brightest of the three galaxies in the gravitationally interacting Leo triplet of three galaxies. The image was taken with a Planewave 24″ CDK24 in Rio Hurtado Chile by Martin Pugh and processed by Michael Adler.