We've been enjoying several consecutive nights of clear skies and the lack of vapour trails is noticeable. I thought I'd try something demanding to see what my 8-inch scope and camera can do. I selected NGC 3718, ARP 214. Whilst the main body of this galaxy is relatively bright at mag 10.7, the extended star streams from its interaction with the neighbouring galaxy NGC 3729 are very faint and close to my sky background in brightness.

NGC 3718 is around 52 million light-years away and is classified as a peculiar barred spiral galaxy. The galaxy's spiral arms are quite warped due to the gravitational interaction with its close neighbour on the left in this image, NGC 3729. NGC 3718 features a prominent, dark spiral dust lane wrapping around its nucleus. The core of the galaxy probably contains a supermassive black hole.

The smaller companion galaxy, NGC 3729, is also a barred spiral. It is 150,000 light-years from NGC 3718. 

The group of five galaxies below NGC 3729 is Hickson 56 (aka Arp 322). The Hickson 56 group is 400 million light-years from us. Four of the five galaxies appear to be interacting and linked together. The fifth galaxy (Hickson 56A) is an edge-on spiral galaxy.