M96 is the largest galaxy in the Leo Group, located about 35M light-years away. It has an asymmetric spiral galaxy with dust lanes that seem to "dive in" to the core. The elongated object at the 7:00 position is a background edge-on galaxy, likely to be about 5 times more distant than M96 based on its apparent size. Numerous other background galaxies are also visible in the field. This image was captured over a 2-night period in February 2012 from a dark site near Anza, CA using a 10-inch SCT and an SBIG ST-2000XM camera at f/8. Total integration time was just over 9 hours using luminance and RGB filters.
-- Bruce W.