I agree with everybody else that this galaxy has an interesting and complex structure.
I have a question for all of you who are contributing regarding this galaxy:
Is this galaxy precisely planar, or does it have some features that extend away from its principal plane?
The presence of non-planar phenomena in spiral galaxies is actually a common occurence that seems not to have found its way into many textbooks as yet. (bends, warps, sections of a galaxy at a different p.a. to the rest of it, arms extending away from the plane, etc)
Here's the image from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, for comparison purposes:
And here is the blue sensitive photograph from the Carnegie Atlas of Galaxies:
This object was also imaged at very high resolution, with a 24 inch RC, by Adam Block at:
http://www.caelumobservatory.com
The following is from the survey known as OSUBSGS:
[the left panel is a B-band ("blue") image and the right panel is an H band (near-infrared) exposure ]
Even in the near-infrared exposure from OSUBSGS, there is some rather peculiar looking structure seen, despite the fact that NIR images do not show most of the semi-chaotic material that we see at optical wavelengths(< 1 micron), such as heavy dust clouds and OB stars.
