Continuing clockwise in the ring, make a slow and generous sweep 2° to the southwest to the 11.5-magnitude mini-marvel
NGC 2639. Like NGC 2681, this minute 2'-by-1' grand-design spiral galaxy has a bright nucleus, making it detectable in small telescopes without difficulty. What you won’t see is a ring of 16 HII regions 5" from the nucleus, a black hole powering its Seyfert nucleus, and two quasars superimposed on the core!
The late American astronomer Halton Arp found 10 quasars near the 12.5-magnitude (3' by 2') elliptical galaxy NGC 2693 just 27' south-southeast of NGC 2639, which has a 14th-magnitude (1' by 1') elliptical companion (NGC 2694) about 1' to its south.
Our next mini-marvel lies just over 2˚ southwest of Kappa UMa. NGC 2712 is an oblique 12th-magnitude barred spiral (2.8' by 1.5') oriented nearly north to south, just over the border in Lynx. Its pale elliptical disk shows a central enhancement through a small telescope. But large scopes may reveal its weak bar and tightly wound (though well-developed) arms. Compare the brightness of the arms; do you see an asymmetry?
From NGC 2712, make a gentle 2° sweep due east to the neglected 11.4-magnitude open-face spiral NGC 2776, also in Lynx. While the object is a low-surface-brightness pale glow, it has a long needlelike nucleus immersed in a halo spanning 3' by 2.5'.
We’ll end our toe ring survey by returning to NGC 2841, then dropping 1½˚ south to our final challenge object: NGC 2857 (Arp 1). This 13th-magnitude open-faced spiral galaxy (2') is the first entry into 1966’s Arp’s Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies; Arp placed it in his class of “spiral galaxies with low surface brightness.” NGC 2857 shows two long, thin, tightly wound spiral arms that unwind like a pinwheel. It looks so small because this denizen lies 225 million light-years distant (more than 100 times the distance of M101 and only 25 percent smaller), so you can at least get an idea of what M101 would look like if it were 100 times farther away.
Don’t let the magnitudes of some of these objects prevent you from looking. You may surprise yourself with the challenging objects you can see and the amazing feelings you get from glimpsing galaxies that are so far away. Good luck.