With larger amateur telescopes, it is well worth searching for some of the many galaxies located in the constellation Leo. Charles Messier listed five of them in his catalogue of nebulous objects—though he did not yet know that these were independent systems containing many billions of stars. The galaxies M 65 and M 66 form a close pair that can already be detected with good binoculars. Together with the galaxy NGC 3628, they form the Leo Triplet, sometimes also referred to as the M 66 Group.
Together with the M 96 Group (see below), all of these galaxies belong to the Leo I Galaxy Group, which contains around twenty members.
A small telescope reveals, slightly west of the Leo Triplet, the group consisting of M 95, M 96, M 105, and several additional galaxies. This collection is named the M 96 Group, after its brightest member. Together with the Leo Triplet, this galaxy group belongs to the Virgo Supercluster, which also includes the Local Group and our own Milky Way Galaxy.
The brightest members of the M 96 Galaxy Group, located about 35 million light-years from Earth, are the Messier objects M 96, M 95, and M 105. NGC 3384 is also part of the group, whereas the galaxy NGC 3389, which is also visible in the image, lies much farther in the background at a distance of roughly 57 million light-years. An interactive version of this image can be found in the Aladin Sky Atlas. (Image: DSS colored, Digitized Sky Survey, STScI/NASA, colored & HEALPix-processed by CDS, via Aladin Sky Atlas; labeling: Uwe Reichert)
