Hamburger Galaxy (NGC 3628) (Jim Meeker)

Hamburger Galaxy (NGC 3628)

The Hamburger Galaxy (NGC 3628) in Leo.

Also known as Sarah's Galaxy, NGC 3628 is an unbarred spiral galaxy discovered by William Herschel in 1784. It is about 35 million light-years away in the constellation Leo and is similar in size to our Milky Way.

Seen edge on, NGC 3628 is a remarkable, obviously disturbed galaxy. Its disk fans out near the galaxy’s edge while a broad equatorial dust band obscures the galaxy’s bright central region, and hides most of the bright young stars in its spiral arms.

Along with M65 and M66 it forms the famous Leo Triplet, a triple group of galaxies. The gravitational pull of these neighboring galaxies has most likely tipped the plane of NGC 3628, and made its central dust lane “wobbled” in appearance.

You can't see it in this image but there is an almost 300,000 light-year long tidal tail that extends down and to the right (Toward M65). The distorted shape and tidal tail suggests once again that NGC 3628 is interacting gravitationally with the other spiral galaxies in the Leo Triplet.

Image acquired at Prairie Sky Observatory, a facility of Twin City Amateur Astronomers (tcaa.us).

Please note: The following tables are updated every 24 hours.

Distribution of astrophotographers

This table shows the number of distinct astrophotographers who have been assigned and IOTD/TP award compared to the total number of images awarded.
	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

Distribution of subject types

This table shows the distribution of awards per subject type, compared to the popularity of images of that subject type.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

Distribution of data sources

This table shows the distribution of awards per data source, compared to the popularity of images acquired from that data source.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
Promotions by Submitters When 3 distinct Submitters promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for Top Pick status. This requirement, in addition to anonymization of images and distribution to only a subset of them, prevents biases and ensures that the best images are selected.
Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

Status	n/a
Started	n/a
Astrometry.net job	n/a
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

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