It shows predominantly star-forming regions and other emission nebulae, most of which are located in the bar and along the spiral arms. The exposure time was 900 seconds and the image quality is excellent, about 0.36 arcsec. The field measures about 7 x 7 arcmin 2 . Dark dust clouds that obscure the light from objects behind them are seen along the bar and spiral arms. The gravitational action of the bar structure drives the large dust lanes into the nuclear region where intense star forming activity takes place.
North is up and East is left.
The star-forming regions in this area show up as knots. The nucleus itself is very bright. The nucleus probably contains a very massive black hole. Moreover, this infrared view penetrates further into the obscuring dust to reveal several intriguing, red objects. The reddest two to the N-NE coincide with very compact and intense radio sources which are probably supernova remnants.