M94, NGC 4736

The Sab spiral galaxy M94 in the constellation Canes Venatici is considered by some (but not others) to be in a group including M64 and various fainter galaxies. It has an extremely bright innner region surrounded by a blue ring of young star clusters, then a fainter yellowish region of older stars also surrounded by traces of young stars, and even further out a very much fainter outer ring. All of these features are visible in this picture, due to the use of a drastically compressed intensity mapping. This stretch also reveals quite a few small faint background galaxies. This picture was taken in May 1998 at the KPNO 0.9-meter telescope. Image size 17.0 arc minutes.