NGC 4157 is a nearly edge-on spiral galaxy in Ursa Major, located about 55M light-years away. ?Based on its apparent size and distance, its disk is about 125K light-years in diameter, which makes the galaxy somewhat larger than our Milky Way galaxy. Although NGC 4157 is quite photogenic, it seems to get little attention from amateur imagers or, for that matter, professional astronomers. ?The surrounding background in the image has many distant galaxies including some galaxy clusters at distances of 3-5B light-years.
The image was captured during 6 nights in May 2024 from SkyPi Remote Observatory using a 12.5" PlaneWave scope and a QSI-640ws camera at f/8 for a final LRGB integration of 18.3 hours.
Thanks for looking,
Bruce W.
