NGC 3185 is one of four galaxies in the Hickson Compact Galaxy Group #44.  It lies in the constellation of Leo at an estimated distance of between 70 and 100 light-years.  In lower resolution images, NGC 3185 resembles a ring galaxy with a central bar bisecting the surrounding ring.  It's actually a barred spiral galaxy.  The high resolution Hubble Space Telescope image above shows the ring is composed of two tightly wound spiral arms.  Each arm starts at the end of the central bar and extends half way around the galaxy.  The two ends of the arms almost join, giving the appearance of a ring surrounding the galaxy.

The image above was assembled with data obtained from the Hubble Legacy Archive.  Three filtered images were used for the red, green and blue channels.  These were imaged using filters of F814W for red, F606W for green and F450W for blue.  An image consisting of a combination of all available filters was used for the luminance channel.  This image is classified in the Hubble Legacy Archive as a detection, or white light, image.  The color image was created as a standard LRGB image.

¹Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, and obtained from the Hubble Legacy Archive, which is a collaboration between the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI/NASA), the Space Telescope European Coordinating Facility (ST-ECF/ESA) and the Canadian Astronomy Data Centre (CADC/NRC/CSA).