NGC 3628 is an edge on spiral galaxy in Leo. Often called "Sarah's Galaxy", it is the third galaxy of the Leo Triplet. Its companions are M65 and M66 and the three bright galaxies are within about 2/3 of a degree of each other (the full moon is about 1/2 degree). NGC 3628 displays a beautiful dust lane bisecting it. Longer exposures can reveal the "tidal tail" - a string of stars and gas that extends to the west by almost a degree (about 4 times the diameter of the galaxy itself!). The tidal tail is caused by the gravitational interaction with M65 and M66.

In this image, North is Up. This image is cropped to 62% of the original full frame.

Exposure Details
Lens	Celestron C-8 SCT with Lumicon telecompressor
Focal Length	1100mm
Focal Ratio	f/5.5
Mount	Schaefer GEM - 7 1/2
Guiding	Unguided
Camera	Canon 20Da
Exposure	191 subexposures of 45 seconds each at ISO 1600 - total of almost 2 1/2 hours
Calibration	30 darks, 30 flats, 30 bias
Date	May 2, 2011
Temperature	47F
SQM Reading
Seeing	3 of 5
Location	Pine Mountain Club, California
Software Used	Images Plus 4.0 for camera control, calibration, stacking and digital development. Photoshop CS5 used for color correction, neutralize background, shadows and highlights, star shrinking, saturation adjustments, unsharp mask, screen mask invert, and high pass filter. Noise Ninja for noise reduction.
Notes	When I have all of my equipment issues resolved, I want to reacquire this galaxy and try to capture the tidal tail. Its quite faint, but could be impressive.