Another attempt - M66

Last month I captured some data for M66. This is a galaxy that is part of the Leo Triplet of galaxies. M66 is a spiral that is tilted towards us enough to show off its beautiful spiral structure. The central core region is a bright glow across which is a bar. The spiral arms are connected at the ends of the bar. Along the wispy spiral arms are clumps indicating high concentrations of stars, or possibly active star forming regions caused by a gravitational interaction of a nearby galaxy. 

M66 is also classified as an Arp Galaxy, specifically Arp 16. Halton Arp classified this galaxy in the group of Spiral Galaxies with Detached Segments. I believe the detached segments that Arp saw were these higher concentrations of stars along the arms. 

I was not really happy with my first attempt at processing this image and so I took another crack at it. The image was processed in Photoshop with the use of Astronomy Tools Action Set for PS. I am finding that as the temperature increases, the noise from the camera is becoming more of a nuisance. My ZWO ASI183MC camera is not of the cooled variety and so I guess this is to be expected. The obvious solution would be to obtain a cooled camera. The other option would be to take more data to increase the signal to noise ratio. Leo is getting low in the west and obscured by my house's roof line, so I will need to wait until next spring for a another try at this one. 

Clear skies;

rw