[M65, Greenberg/Tucker/AOP]

When participating in the Advanced Observer Program of the Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO) Visitor Center, Chuck Greenberg and Scott Tucker took this gorgeous image of spiral galaxy M65 in Leo. The image was obtained with the AOP's Meade 16-inch LX200 telescope operating at f/6.3 and SBIG ST8E CCD camera with color filter wheel. Adam Block did the processing of this image: One iteration of L-R deconvolution (sharpening) algorithm using CCDsharp was applied to the luminance image. The new Digital Developement (DDP) method via Maxim/DL was also used in order to display the very dim and very bright details of the image simultaneously. This is a composite of 4 CCD images: Luminance = 40 minutes, binned 1x1. Red = 14 minutes, Green = 14 minutes, and Blue = 28 minutes, binned 3x3 each.

M65 is a typical spiral galaxy that could be found anywhere in the local universe. M65 has tightly wrapped spiral arms and a large nuclear center. The central stars are older and redder than disk stars, which are hotter and appear more blue.
Credit: Chuck Greenberg & Scott Tucker/Adam Block/AURA/NOAO/NSF

  • Adam Block's M65 page with more info on this image
  • More images from the Advanced Observer Program

    [M65, Bill Keel]

    This color-composite of CCD images was obtained by Bill Keel of the university of Alabama. It shows the bright early-type spiral galaxy M65 in Leo, one of the nearest galaxies with such a large bulge and tight arms. The intricate spiral dust lanes are especially well shown. The arms have a much smoother texture than in later Hubble types (like M101 or M83), but their blue color compared to the central bulge still betrays recent star formation.

    This color composite is from B and I images (with synthetic V) taken during twilight with a Tektronix 2048x2048 CCD at the prime focus of the 4-meter Mayall telescope of Kitt Peak National Observatory. North is at the top and east to the left. The image has been block-averaged to 512x512 for this presentation, which uses a logarithmic intensity transformation to preserve information across a wide dynamic range. The field is 7.1 arcminutes square. A few of the brighter field stars saturated the CCD so strongly that some of the electric charge bled along columns, giving the vertical streaks from several stars. Bill reports that he "left the sky a bit darker than usual in this image, to hide the dark blotch in the B image left over when a moth worked its way into the filter wheel; insects don't flat-field very well while still alive and flapping inside the camera."

  • More images from Bill Keel's collection

    [M65, anonymous source] [PNG]

    Image of M65 from an anonymous source

  • AAO image of M65
  • Amateur images of M65
  • More images of M65 and M66

    Hartmut Frommert (spider@seds.org)
    Christine Kronberg (smil@lrz.uni-muenchen.de)

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    Last Modification: 8 Jun 2001, 22:22 MET