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This trio of galaxies is particularly striking because of the contrast in appearance between the edge-on spiral, elliptical, and face-on spiral galaxies. They are located about 100 million light-years from our galaxy.

Equipment: Meade 14" LX200R/ST-10XME/Astro-Physics CCDT67 telecompressor/Astrodon LRGB filters/Paramount ME
F-ratio: f/6.5
Exposures: LRGB:  L 12 x 5 minutes, binned 2x2: R 12 x 5 minutes: G 12 x 5 minutes: B 12 x 5 minutes: RGB binned 3x3
Date: June 15, 2007
Location: Landers, California, USA
Technical Notes: Individual exposures were obtained using CCDAutoPilot2 and then sigma combined. The RGB image was created in Registar 1.0. A high-pass filter of 4 pixels was applied to the bright portions of the luminance image. A Gaussian Blur of 1 pixel with a threshold of 0 was applied to the dim portions of the luminance and the RGB image. Mild gradients were removed with Russell Cromaan's GradientXTerminator plug-in for Photoshop. The RGB image was duplicated and combined with the original using Soft Light to enhance color.