The Hamburger Galaxy

The Hamburger Galaxy or NGC 3628 is an edge-on spiral galaxy that is gravitationally interacting with its companions M65 and M66. The galaxy looks wider than normal. Its dust lane is distorded at the extremities and there is a trail of stars partially visible at the right-hand side of the picture. The area surrounding the galaxy core is very blue, which is a sign of intense formation of blue stars. Processing the data to bring out the features described above was quite challenging. I had three shots at it before I came up with a result that satisfied me.