NGC 2997- is located in the southern constellation of Antila. It is an 11th magnitude spiral galaxy reminiscent of the M83 galaxy. It has a very low surface brightness. Bright red knots of ionised hydrogen  scattered through the spiral arms are birthing millions of hot, young, blue stars, their light, as can be seen, is extending throughout the arms. The core of this beautiful galaxy is showing that there are a large concentration of much older, yellow red stars.

NOTE: This version is a combination of old Luminance I took back in '07, combined with this recent set of Luminance 2010 The star refraction visible on the brighter stars in this enhanced version is due to the under sized secondary I had installed in my Newtonian scope at the time 2007. See previous rendition of this object from 07

 Conditions-As is per typical this time of the year here, seeing and transparency are a little poor. But it was still good to get out. I've found in the past when imaging this object, there is always a gradient to remove.. perhaps it is the area of sky where the milky way is over head. Needed much more data to really do this justice, but weather, moon and time are an obstacle.  Gradients removed by PixInsight Le's back ground extraction routine.