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Old April 19th 07, 01:41 AM posted to alt.binaries.pictures.astro
Preston S Justis
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Posts: 40
Default ASTRO: Leo III (Leo A)

"Rick Johnson" wrote in message
...
After Leo I and Leo II comes Leo III. Why Leo II is also known as Leo B
but Leo III is Leo A I can't fathom. Leo III has a population of very
young stars which is odd for a dwarf with so little dust and gas. It
seems to have had several periods of star birth over its lifetime.

Leo I is a over 800 thousand light years away and Leo II 750 thousand
light years. They are satellites of our galaxy. Leo III however is 2.5
million light years away so a member of our local group but not a
satellite galaxy. Still, thanks to those young massive stars I was able
to resolve quite a few of its stars.

I tried something new when imaging this guy. I used 3x3 binning on the
color frames. Otherwise, through the filters I'd have needed a lot of
exposure time to capture the color of the faint stars. This allowed me
to use half the exposure time and still resolve the stars through the
filters. It turned out well so I may do this more often and save some
imaging time.

14" LX200R@f/10, L=4x10' binned 2x2, RGB=2x10' binned 3x3, STL-11000XM,
Paramount ME

Rick


WOW! That's a dwarf galaxy if I ever saw one. I bet Marty Germano would
love to see this
image!

Scott