Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Coma Berenices (Com)  ·  Contains:  IC 3571  ·  NGC 4565  ·  Needle Galaxy
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NGC 4565 – The most beautiful needle in a haystack, er: in the sky, Olaf Fritsche
NGC 4565 – The most beautiful needle in a haystack, er: in the sky
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NGC 4565 – The most beautiful needle in a haystack, er: in the sky

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
NGC 4565 – The most beautiful needle in a haystack, er: in the sky, Olaf Fritsche
NGC 4565 – The most beautiful needle in a haystack, er: in the sky
Powered byPixInsight

NGC 4565 – The most beautiful needle in a haystack, er: in the sky

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Description

Our Milky Way is supposed to look something like the needle galaxy NGC 4565 when viewed almost perfectly from the side. 

Discovered by Wilhelm Herschel in 1785, many observers consider it one of the most beautiful galaxies in the sky. For us as photographers, with a distance of about 55 million kilometers and a diameter of more than 100,000 light years, it can be captured on the sensor at long focal lengths almost filling the image. Even the slight bend at the ends of its spiral arms does not detract from its beauty.

Because the summer nights are so short, I had to collect three nights of data for an acceptable SNR.

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