NGC3718 Galaxy

2014/02/26 - Conditions were not too good. I needed to delete some frames because of passing clouds at the beginning of the session. The rest of the night was pretty good; FWHM between 2.44" and 2.84". Because of the clouds I wasn't able to shoot new flats, so I used old flats which don't function optimal. I also needed to crop off a reasonable big area with reflections, don't know what caused it, but I think I'll will remove the CCDT67 reducer. And I surely need to collimate the OTA again.

NGC 3718's spiral arms look twisted and extended, mottled with young blue star clusters. Drawn out dust lanes obscure its yellowish central regions. A mere 150 thousand light-years to the left 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 beneath NGC 3718. Hickson Group 56 consists of five interacting galaxies and lies over 400 million light-years away.