Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Coma Berenices (Com)  ·  Contains:  IC 3571  ·  NGC 4565  ·  Needle Galaxy
NGC4565 Needle Galaxy, Joe Niemeyer
NGC4565 Needle Galaxy
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NGC4565 Needle Galaxy

NGC4565 Needle Galaxy, Joe Niemeyer
NGC4565 Needle Galaxy
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NGC4565 Needle Galaxy

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Description

Our own Milky Way Galaxy lies perpendicular to the Needle Galaxy (NGC 4565) and so we see it almost perfectly edge-on. It appears very thin from this perspective and that's how it earned its name. I can imagine someone in the Needle Galaxy looking at us in their telescope. They would see us edge-on and probably name our galaxy the Needle Galaxy. And maybe they call their own galaxy the Milky Way! Of course, since it takes 50 million years for light to travel between our respective galaxies, they would be seeing us in Earth's Early Eocene Period just after the age of dinosaurs. The bulge in the center of this galaxy suggests that it is a barred spiral galaxy. You can also see a small warp in the dark lane surrounding the galaxy that is probably due to gravitational interaction with one of its small companion galaxies. If you look closely, you can just make out one of these companion galaxies above and right of center.

I made this image from a stack of twenty 300-second exposures that I shot at 2310mm focal length, calibrated with 20 each dark, flat, and dark flat frames, then post-processed with StarNet++ and Photoshop.

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NGC4565 Needle Galaxy, Joe Niemeyer