Description (Wikipedia)

"NGC 972 is a dusty=10.5px spiral galaxy in the northern constellation of Aries, located at an approximate distance of 49.8 Mly from the Milky Way. It was discovered in 1784 by William Herschel. The galactic features suggest it may have undergone a merger with a gas-rich companion, giving it asymmetrical arms, plus starburst activity in the nucleus and an off-planar nuclear ring. The inner 3.6 kpc of the galaxy is undergoing star formation at the rate of 2.1–2.7 M☉·yr−1, but it lacks a nuclear bulge."

On Starburst galaxies: "A starburst galaxy is one undergoing an exceptionally high rate of star formation, as compared to the long-term average rate of star formation in the galaxy or the star formation rate observed in most other galaxies. For example, the star formation rate of the Milky Way galaxy is approximately 3 M☉/yr, while starburst galaxies can experience star formation rates of 100 M☉/yr or more.[1] In a starburst galaxy, the rate of star formation is so large that the galaxy consumes all of its gas reservoir, from which the stars are forming, on a timescale much shorter than the age of the galaxy. As such, the starburst nature of a galaxy is a phase, and one that typically occupies a brief period of a galaxy's evolution. The majority of starburst galaxies are in the midst of a merger or close encounter with another galaxy. Starburst galaxies include M82, NGC 4038/NGC 4039 (the Antennae Galaxies), and IC 10."

Fun fact that the continuum subtracted Ha picture from the pros (Ravindranath, Prabhu, 1998) looks a lot like my Ha image ;-)

And this is mine...

Personal note

An object that is a tad too small for my optical system, but in the end the Ha rich starburst areas came out nicely in the final result. Stars are a bit bloated, due to the magnification from the original field of view.

Processing

Chrominance: WBPP, autocrop, Graxpert, Deconvolution, Noise reduction, RGB combination, Background Neutralisation, Image Solving, SpectroPhotometric ColorCalibration, GHS, Curves
Luminance: WBPP with 2xdrizzle, Graxpert, Deconvolution, denoise, GHS, Curves, denoise, HDRM MST
H data: create HRR, color calibration, stretch, deduct red continuum, clip dark, put back in.