NGC 2841 is a beautiful spiral galaxy about 45 million light years away. It is not particularly active, though there are clearly visible the usual pink star forming regions. It is a beautiful example of a flocculent spiral, its many spiral arms broken up by dark dust clouds--to me to the point that they almost look like rings. Also, the far side, to the left, has much less obvious dust lanes than the near side on the right, since we view the far side through the galactic halo of stars, which reduces the dust lane visibility on that side.
The other reason I like this target is the wonderful small SdBR galaxy (an Sd barred galaxy with a ring), PGC 26572, to the upper right of the image. I like it so much I pushed NGC 2841 from taking a central dominant role, to bring back some emphasis to this small gem. (The PGC database is available online at HyperLeda,
http://leda.univ-lyon1.fr/ ).
Estimates of the surface brightness of NGC 2841 led me to believe this would be a much easier target than it actually was. The central core is very bright indeed, but the spiral arms needed a lot more exposure, especially from my light-polluted-big-city skies. It could have used more exposure still, but there are too many beautiful targets for me to collect more, at least for now.
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