Top: false colour V-band image of NGC 973 based on observations made with the Italian Telescopio Nazionale Galileo (TNG) operated on the island of La Palma by the Fundación Galileo Galilei of the INAF (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica) at the Spanish Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias. The data were cleaned and combined using standard data reduction techniques. Bottom: H i contours overlaid on the same V-band image. The contours start at 1.76 × 10²⁰ atoms cm^-2 and increase as 3, 6, 9, 12, and 15 times this value. The H i beam is shown in the bottom left corner. North is up, east to the left.