This 11.6 magnitude gem in Pegaus is an example of a perfectly edge on Sa-b spiral galaxy. The dust lane can be easily seen in silhouette against the galaxies core, and beyond. This object is good sized, at 6.3 x 2.2 mins, in my 14 acrmin wide field. The actual inclination of this object is about 7 degrees, making for a slightly brighter glow below the dust lane. North is up in this image. The nick name: "Electric Arc Galaxy" is from the galaxies appearance on film shots (burned out core, remember?) to an electric arc between two pointed electrodes.

Three other galaxies are seen in this image. To the upper left along the edge of the field is the 15.4 magnitude inclined spiral CGC 456-27, which is .6 x .3 in size. To the lower right, two objects. The upper is MAC 002+1603A, an 19th magnitude spiral that is a diminutive .3 x .1 in size. Below it, on the bottom of the frame, is MAC 0002+1603B, another 19th mag blur listed as the same size. Few details are available on such objects!

Processing: This image displays plenty of detail, but is very bright in the core. After calibration for dark, bias and flat in Maxim, DDP was applied weakly with only a very low level of kernel sharpening. The 16 bit image was imported into AIP4WIN. Richard Lucy deconvolution of High Frequency components only was applied 5 times, to improve the average seeing of 1.9 arcsec. Luminance and RGB were aligned in Picture Widwon Pro, and In Photoshop 6, the image was converted to LRGB and finalized by applying a moderate contrast and brightness stretch to preserve a totally photographic appearance.

Instrument:  12.5" f/5 Home made Newtonian
Platform:  Astrophysics 1200 QMD
CCD Camera:  SBIG ST7E w/Enhanced Cooling
Exposure:  LRGB = 60:20:20:40 (RGB Binned 2x2)
Filters:  RGB Tricolor
Location:  Payson, Arizona
Elevation:  5150 ft.
Sky:  Seeing FMHW = 1.9 arcsec, Transparency 8/10
Outside Temperature:  15 C
CCD Temperature:  -25 C
Processing:  Maxim DL, Photoshop, AIP4WIN, PW Pro.