Saturday, May 24, 2025

This image captures a region in Coma Berenices featuring three deep sky objects: the barred spiral galaxy NGC 4725, the interacting galaxy NGC 4747, and the rarely imaged planetary nebula LoTr 5, located very close to the galactic north pole. NGC 4725 is an asymmetric barred spiral galaxy located ~40 million light-years away. It is notable for having only one prominent spiral arm, which is not typical for this class of galaxies. Its companion, NGC 4747, shows tidal features due to past gravitational interaction with NGC 4725, including faint stellar streams detectable under good sky conditions. LoTr 5 (short for Longmore–Tritton 5) is a faint and extended planetary nebula. It was only discovered in 1980 and it is known for having the highest galactic latitude among all known planetary nebulae, sitting less than two degrees from the galactic north pole.