NGC2903

Located in Leo, NGC 2903 is a bright spiral galaxy about 30 million light years distant with a faint central bar. The two spiral arms are mainly populated by numerous blue stars and pinkish star forming regions.  Dust and gas dominate the inner structure which also contains large HII regions. One of these appears as a “knot” near the centre of the galaxy and is designed NGC 2905.  

To the right of the image, the irregular shaped companion galaxy PGC27115 is seen. The background also contains several smaller galaxies which are much more distant, some of these have been annotated by Pixinsight.  

This LRGB image contains a Ha blend into the red channel and represents an integration time of 23 hours and was taken with my Esprit 150.  To increase detail, I decided to merge my Lum data with my 2017 acquisition.