IC 4351 is a striking edge-on spiral galaxy located about 88 million light-years away in the constellation Centaurus.
The image reveals a complex disk structure lined with fine dust lanes, scattered star-forming regions, and a luminous, well-defined core. The central bulge glows with a warm yellow light, contrasting with the thin, blue disk that extends on either side, marked by knots of recent star formation.
Spanning approximately 3.6 by 0.8 arcminutes, IC 4351 measures about 92,000 by 20,000 light-years in actual size. Along its midplane, intricate dust features are clearly visible, some of them showing filamentary substructure, while faint warping is noticeable toward both ends of the disk—suggesting that the galaxy may have experienced past tidal interactions or internal dynamical distortion.
This edge-on view allows for a rare look at the vertical layering of a spiral galaxy: thin star-forming regions hugging the dusty plane, thicker populations of older stars in the halo, and the faint glow of a surrounding stellar envelope. The asymmetry in brightness between the left and right sides of the disk hints at localized density variations or starburst episodes.
Imaged in LRGB on my Planewave CDK 1000 at Observatorio El Sauce, Chile.
Image acquisition and processing: Mike Selby