The Phantom Galaxy is considered a classical example of a grand design spiral galaxy. Located in the constellation Pisces, it is estimated to contain 100 billion stars and is approximately 32 million light-years away. M74 is a faint galaxy, making it one of the more difficult Messier objects to locate and image.

This image was made with a Nikon Z7 II and a Nikon 600mm f/6.3 PF lens at f/6.3. A total of 137 30 second exposures at ISO 6400 were made for a total of 68.5 minutes of exposure time. Star tracking was with a Fornax LighTrack II. Images were aligned with Deep Sky Stacker followed by stacking and stretching with Python programs. Additional final processing was done with Capture One and Topaz DeNoise AI.