NGC 3718 (and NGC 3729)

NGC 3718 is a “peculiar galaxy” with a distinctly visible dust lane hinting to us that it was once a much more uniformly flattened spiral galaxy, but has since been heavily distorted after a gravitational encounter with its neighboring spiral galaxy: NGC 3729.
The galaxy pair is located in the constellation Ursa Major at a distance of 42.4 Million light-years from Earth.
The galaxies are only 147,000 light-years from each other and will likely merge within the next billion years.
The distant galaxy cluster above NGC 3718 is located about 300 Million light-years from Earth.

Image acquisition and processing information:

Date: April 7th, 8th and 9th, 2024
Telescope: Celestron Edge HD 14" telescope at F11
Mount: Astro-Physics AP-1200 GTO CP3
Camera: ZWO ASI-2400 MC Pro one-shot-color camera
Guiding: Innovations Foresight Full Frame On-Axis Guider ONAG XM, Camera: ASI-294MC Pro
Exposures: 181 two-minute exposures (unity gain)
Image acquisition and guiding: ASIAIR Plus

Image processing Software: PixInsight v. 1.8.9-2