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Riding high on May evenings
            is this stunning face on spiral, sometimes called the "Pinwheel
            Galaxy" in Ursa Major. The small yellow core, and thick
            blue arms wrapping around the core studded with a large collection
            of HII regions, Blue stellar associations and dark nebula set
            this amazing object off as one of the most beautiful spirals
            in the sky. A whopping 30 arcminutes in size, it pours over the
            edges of my field of view with faint wreath like tendrils of
            nebulosity. At a bright magnitude 8.3, it is a low surface brightness
            object visually spread over half a degree of sky, however photographically
            it is a skyshooters delight. Classed as an SAB(rs)cd spiral,
            its inclination is less than 1 degree and is face on to our line
            of sight. The B-V index indicates an overall neutral hue, which
            integrates the yellow core regions with the outer blue but fainter
            arms. The "average" color of this galaxy is quite neutral.

            
Hordes of faint
            background galaxies dot this image, most being a leaden yellow
            color, dimmed from their great distance through intergalactic
            dust.

            
The brightest knot
            in the arms to the upper right of the nuclear region is NGC5462,
            an complex blue stellar association with a rim of red hydrogen
            around its energetic core. When we add the hydrogen data to the
            image, we get the image on the right. The galaxy dynamics that
             become visible here simply boggles the mind as we can now easily
            see the complex interaction between hot OB associations and the
            surrounding ionized hydrogen. It can also be seen that there
            are numerous small isolated hydrogen patches in and around this
            large and close spiral, and in most cases a small blue star or
            cluster can be seen within or nearby.

Instrument:  12.5" f/5 Home made Newtonian
Mount:  Astrophysics 1200 QMD
CCD Camera:  SBIG 10XME NABG with Enhanced Water Cooling
Guider: Meade DSI-C w/Lumicon Newt Easy Guider
Exposure:  L= 4h. RGB = 40:40:40, Ha = 3h
Location:  Payson, Arizona, Elevation:  5150 ft.
Sky:  Seeing FWHM = 4.2 arcsec (Maxim DL - 10min subframe), Transparency 9/10
Outside Temperature:  55 F
CCD Temperature:  -30 C
Image Processing Tools: 
Maxim DL:  Calibration, deblooming (Starizona Debloomer), aligning, stacking
Gralaks Sigma:  Stacking
PixInsight:  Curves, Deconvolution, noise reduction
Photoshop CS2:  Curves, Color Correction, Gradient removal (Grad Xterminator), Cleanup

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