NGC 3344 – A Loney Wanderer Viewed through Dust

NGC 3344 is a weakly barred spiral galaxy approximately 20 million light years away in the Leo Minor constellation. It contains an inner ring, with its spiral arms wound tightly around it. But as the spiral arms move outward, they become more loosely bound. Its spiral arms are chock full of emission regions containing copious amounts of hydrogen—the red and pink blobs. That material is fodder for the prolific star formation going on in NGC 3344.

The galaxy is an isolated member of the Virgo Supercluster of galaxies. The gray dusty clouds in the image, while appearing to be near the galaxy, are not anywhere close to NGC 3344. They are in the relatively near foreground. That material is what astronomers call an integrated flux nebula. Integrated flux nebulas (IFNs) are the result of extremely diffuse gas and dust at or beyond the perimeter of the galaxy reflecting the light of all the stars in the Milky Way. IFNs are very faint and are extremely hard to capture with a telescope, often requiring dozens or even hundreds of hours of exposure time to unravel.