Description:

Careful inspection of the full field of view for this sharp composite image reveals a surprising number of galaxies both near and far toward the constellation Ursa Major. The most striking is clearly NGC 3718, a warped spiral galaxy found near picture center. NGC 3718's faint spiral arms look twisted and extended, its bright central region crossed by obscuring dust lanes. A mere 150 thousand light-years to the right is another large spiral galaxy, NGC 3729. The two are likely interacting gravitationally, accounting for the peculiar appearance of NGC 3718. While this galaxy pair lies about 52 million light-years away, the remarkable Hickson Group 56 can also be seen clustered just above NGC 3718. Hickson Group 56 consists of five interacting galaxies and lies over 400 million light-years away.

Instrument:	Vixen Visac VC200l at f6.3
Mount:	Losmandy G11 with MTS3SDI
Camera:	SBIG ST10XME NABG
Filters:	SBIG CS LRGB filters

Circumstances:	Clear sky
Comments:	Exposure of 320:70:70:70. I used subframes of 10m because this is a very faint galaxy to image from my lightpolluted location. The flats failed a bit and because of that there are some heavy dust dohnuts in the fov.