This unbarred spiral lies 132Mly away in Sagittarius (lots of stars). It is seldom imaged - I now know why - the inner disc is quite bright, but the spiral arms are very faint, and that bright inner disc is only ~1 arcmin and the arms are within about 5.5 arcmin.
This is 10 hours of data - 4L and 2 each R,G,B - and it really needs lots more to dig out the faintest arms. So I guess this is work in progress.
Shot over two nights, seeing OK (1.9") to not so good (2.7").
Trevor and Mike,
Thanks for the comments. A lot more data would make processing easier, but I'm not holding my breath, given the continuing cloudiness. Getting two reasonable nights in a row was a real gift.
Mark
Greg and Dave,
Thanks for the comments.
The size and distance of this make it a tricky subject. With the cloudiness, which has gone on for so long, it's hard to find enough good quality dark sky time to do it justice. But it is a very shapely little object!
Mark
). It is seldom imaged - I now know why - the inner disc is quite bright, but the spiral arms are very faint, and that bright inner disc is only ~1 arcmin and the arms are within about 5.5 arcmin.
