telescope. The galaxy was described as tri-
angular shaped, and was held steady with
averted vision.
Galactic cannibals
Above: Leo I is a faint, challenging dwarf galaxy
that lies in our Local Group at a distance of about
800,000 light-years. It lies a short distance from
Leo’s brightest star, Regulus. BERNHARD HUBL
Left: Regulus itself is a 1st-magnitude beacon
that hides two faint stars circling the bright
primary: a “violet” companion 3' away and
a fainter red dwarf 2.5' away. This telescopic
sketch captures all three stars and was made
with a 6-inch f/8 reflector at 240x. JEREMY PEREZ
Gamma Leonis is
beautiful, appearing
as two golden orbs:
a reddish-orange
primary with
a lemon-yellow
companion.
isolated of its kind in the Local Group.
Lying about 2.5 million light-years away, it
appears as a featureless sphere of stars
bursting forth with relatively youthful stars
(around 90 percent of which are less than
8 billion years old), yet it shows no signs of
tidal interactions having taken place to
trigger new star formation.
Finding this cosmic puzzle will test
your visual mettle. The rub is that Leo III
is three magnitudes fainter than Leo I but
much smaller (5' by 3'), so its light is more
compact. You’ll find it about 1˚ south-
southwest of 5th-magnitude 20 Leo
Minoris in the Lion’s high mane (R.A.
9h59m26.4s; Dec. 30˚44'47"). The one
observation I’m aware of was made by a
South African observer using an 8-inch f/6
APM Wirth-Intes Maksutov Newtonian 86
Let’s dip farther south into the Lion’s mane
to 2nd-magnitude Algieba (Gamma [γ]
Leonis), near which we’ll find an amazing
galaxy gobbler. But first, keep your tele-
scope trained on Gamma Leonis, one of
the night sky’s finest binaries for telescopes
of all sizes. It’s amazingly beautiful, appear-
ing as two golden orbs: a 2nd-magnitude
reddish-orange primary with a lemon-
yellow 3rd-magnitude companion about 5"
away. At times, the secondary will take on a
more illusory aqua hue when seen at high
magnification; indeed, the 19th-century
observer William Henry Smyth saw the
companion as “greenish yellow.” You’ll have
to use your imagination to see the
10-Jupiter-mass exoplanet in its Earth-like
orbit around the primary.
When you’ve finished exploring Algieba,
poodle along just 30' to the east-northeast,
where you’ll find the interacting galaxies
NGC 3226 and NGC 3227. NGC 3227, the
larger and brighter of the two, is a peculiar
barred spiral that shines at 10th magnitude
and appears as a 7'-long ellipse, making it a
near twin in size to M108 in Ursa Major.
NGC 3226 is a 2'-wide, 11.5-magnitude
peculiar elliptical nipping the north-
northwestern rim of its larger neighbor. At
their union, a tiny bridge appears to con-
nect the two. (And I wonder what size tele-
scope is required to see that!)
I’ve spied the two easily through a 5-inch
refractor, but the real drama is reserved
for users of large-aperture telescopes
and astroimagers, as the two galaxies are
awash in the remains of a deceased third
galaxy — cannibalized by the gravity of
the visual pair.
High-resolution optical images with the
Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope in
Hawaii, combined with data from the
European Space Agency’s Herschel Space
Observatory and NASA’s Hubble and
Spitzer space telescopes, have revealed the
braided remains of the cannibalized galaxy,
whose gas and stars have been torn asunder
by gravitational forces. This extragalactic
detritus now describes a vast and ornate
series of loops and swirls around the two
visible members. How much of this detail
can be seen visually (and through what
size telescope) is something you can
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