This object is a double barred spiral galaxy located 50 million light years away in the constellation of Coma Berenices at a declination of +30 degrees. This magnitude 10.4 galaxy spans 7 arc-minutes in our apparent view, which corresponds to a diameter of 100,000 light years.

There is so much that I love about this subtly colorful galaxy, which by my calculation we are viewing at about 20 degrees from edge-on:

- The white barred core runs from 11 o’clock to 5 o’clock as a faint wide band. We would have a much better view of this primary bar from a face-on view.

- The bright white small central section of the core is also barred, but runs perpendicular to the primary bar.

- The brown dust lane is fascinating – spiraling into the center and forming an eye-shaped outline surrounding the bright small central bar. Away from the core, the dust lane branches out into various parts of the mid-disk region.

- A blue star-forming ring, sprinkled with star clusters, has been established in the mid-section of the disk.

- A tiny dwarf galaxy is seen against, or perhaps even through, through the upper right portion of the outer disk.

Dust lanes in galaxies provide an excellent visual clue as to which side of the galaxy is nearest to us. The dust lanes typically bisect the galactic plane of the disk. This is especially easy to see for edge-on galaxies. In contrast, the brightest stars are packed on either side of this plane, with the highest density around the core. This has the visual impact of hiding the presence of dust on the far side of the disk when the galaxy is viewed at an angle, as in this case. It is as if we are “peaking under” the stars on the near side of this disk to see the dust band. I usually orient my object with north up, but I sometimes make an exception for galaxies, as in this image where south is up. It seems visually more natural to me to see the near side of the galaxy on the bottom of the image.

Neither of the other 2 galaxies in the image are interacting with NGC 4274. The faint dwarf galaxy below NGC 4274, PGC 213976, is 85 million light years away and only 10,000 light years in diameter. The grand spiral galaxy above, PGC 213975, is 1 billion light years away and 100,000 light years in diameter.