NGC3642 – a rarely imaged galaxy in Ursa Major

About the Object

NGC3642 is spiral galaxy in the constellation Ursa Major. It features an active galactic nuclei. Interestingly, the German and English Wikipedia differ by a factor of 2 in distance (and thus size) while quoting the same reference ... :-)

While NGC3642  is the brightest object in the NGC3642 or  LCG234 group, it actually is a difficult object to image: the nucleus is fairly bright, but the disk is quite extended and of low surface brightness, making it quite hard to work it out against the sky background in light polluted suburbia. On the other hand side, when successful, one turns out with a decent sized galaxy image.

Observation Notes

data were taken on 2024 January 16, 18 and 20.

Technical Details

View the full-resolution image together with complete acquisition and processing details on AstroBin.