NGC3718, NGC372 & Hickson 56 revisited: August 2020

 While waiting to be able to resume my astrophotographic activity, I am reviewing old images.

I have reprocessed the image (taken in 2011) of this interesting Ursa Major galaxy cluster.

This field includes a number of interesting and peculiar galaxies located at a distance of about 42 million light years: NGC3718, a galaxy with an extraordinary "S" shape included in the Atlas of peculiar galaxies from Dr. Halton Arp as Arp 214, NGC3729 which seems to orbit at a distance of about 145.000 light years of NGC3718 and which may be responsible for the strange shape of it, and a group of 5 galaxies in the background known as Hickson 56 (and also included in Arp's catalogue as Arp 322).

The image is a LRGB composition with about 14 hours of accumulated exposure. I have tried to improve a bit the overall contrast of the image as well as the level of detail in the galaxies.

Click on the image for a higher resolution version or go to the Gallery section for full resolution and complete exposure details.

Imaging equipment was TOA-150 & STL-11k.