Here are my observations of this beautiful galaxy...

I first observed it with my 18". pretty easy to see, amazingly thin. The distinctly brighter core, although small, certainly stands out. The surface brightness of the arms is quite high. I did not really see detailed flaring, but for sure the ends of the spiral arms were not sharp. Rather, they did appear fuzzy. I tried hard to see "plumes" but the only thing I could readily detect was that the ends were not pointy, rather they were soft.

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I did also observe this galaxy with my 6" f5.9 achromatic refractor. The galaxy was quite bright, again with a distinctly brighter nucleus. The edges of the spiral arms were definitely sharper than they were in the 18", though not pointy when examined at 128X. This seems to confirm that with the 18" I did really see the flaring, as a softness of the edges of the arms.... Unfortunately, persistant high clouds over the last few days did not allow further observations of the galaxy, hopefully I'll have another chance next new moon...