This target is probably a bit ambitious for my refractor in my backyard, but nothing ventured...

NGC 3718 's shape and details have lured me into trying to capture my own image of it and its companions. Also catalogued at Arp 214, it lies in Ursa Major about 50 Mly from us, but only an estimated 150,000 from the barred spiral NGC 3729, seen here to its right. Its warped appearance is thought to be due to past interaction with this smaller galaxy. NGC 3729 is estimated to be 60 000 ly in diameter and to host an intermediate-mass black hole in its core (4-400 K solar masses). 

The small group of 5 galaxies below NGC 3718 are in Hickson Group 56, estimated to be about 8 times further away at around 120 Mpc.  Two members are apparently classified as Seyfert galaxies, galaxies with Active Galactic Nuclei, thought to be due to the presence of supermassive black holes at their cores and hence highly luminous. More information on  HCG 56 can be found here and more information from Wikipedia on Seyfert galaxies here. 

I probably had this image in my mind luring me on--an APOD winner from more than 10 years ago. Since starting on the quest to capture it myself, I have come across many fine images, including this one  by Kevin Morefield. I decided to give it a shot, knowing it would take a few nights to gather enough  data. 

With a total of only about 7 hours of useable  data, I leaned heavily on NXT in my processing. I finally ended up using a combination of techniques between the luminance data, for which I ended up using the starless version, and straightforward processing of the RGB data. I found the best result of many ways of combining them into LRGB to be using a max (starless, RGB) expression. It preserved the colour and detail while keeping the star presence more to my taste.

Clearly to really do this target justice much more integration time and a larger aperture would be beneficial. I am guessing I will need to at least double my total integration time to make a second effort on this worthwhile but this image at least starts to scratch the itch of NGC 3718 for me.