From the star charts and books I knew Leo provided at least one opportunity to see two, may be galaxies within the same field of vision.
I headed for the galaxy pair M65 and M66, both type Sb (Spiral with less tightly wound arms). There was a possibility of also capturing NGC 3628 alongside, also a type Sb galaxy.
M65 and M66 were just about visible visually through the telescope, although any detail was lost.
For imaging I have been getting slightly braver with these faint objects and for this I used a series of 2min 30sec exposures. The problem with longer exposures is camera noise and tracking error (as the telescope tries to track the moving sky). In total I took 39, of which around 32 were usable, so as a composite there is a total of 1 hour 20 mins of exposure time here. I think this is starting to pay off as the images become a bit more detailed and somehow slightly softer and three dimensional. I’m also being a lot more disciplined about taking groups of 10 light (picture) frames followed by 5 dark frames, and processing these in groups. This has all but eliminated the camera readout noise caused by the electronics heating up over time.
