M74 is a spiral galaxy about 30 million light years from Earth, having about 100 billion stars. Its low surface brightness makes it the most difficult of the 110 Messier objects to see with amateur astronomy equipment.

This image was created from 150 thirty second exposures with a ZWO ASI224MC camera at the prime focus of an 8 inch f/4 Newtonian reflector telescope.

On the right side of the image, towards the bottom, there is a long smudge. This smudge is the asteroid 554 Peraga, a 100 km wide minor planet orbiting the sun between Mars and Jupiter. When I was acquiring the individual images of M74, I could barely see the galaxy on my laptop PC screen, but several stars were visible. The brightest "star" was asteroid 558 Peraga, although I did not realize at the time that it was not an actual star. While processing the 150 frames to make this image, it became apparent that this "star" was moving slowly, relative to the galaxy and the other stars. I started my planetarium software (Cartes du Ciel), reset the time in the software to the time that I was acquiring the images of M74, and switched on the view for asteroids, which I normally leave switched off. There it was, asteroid 554 Peraga, right next to the galaxy.

At an apparent magnitude of about 12, 554 Peraga is a very faint object, but in this small part of the sky, which appears to the unaided eye to be completely empty, it was the brightest object visible on this night.