NGC 4565 - The Needle Galaxy - is a classic edge-on Spiral Galaxy located 30-50 million light-years away in the constellation of Coma Berenices.
This is one of my favorite galaxies - first seen visually in a 16" telescope 35 years ago. It made such a strong impression on me that I have always remembered it and added it to my list of "favorites".
I have not had the chance to shoot this target until this year. I shot this over 3 evenings on the nights of 4-28-22, 4-29-22, and 5-5-22.
While clear - those nights had very poor seeing and the last night it had rained all day and the humidity was 100%. To get the sharpest image possible I spent a lot of time blinking images and using SubFrameSelector (for the first time!) to pull out the worst offending subs that would have impacted sharpness.
I was a little concerned that I may have made the background sky too dark in this version. So I tapped into the hive mind of the #Astrophotography Community on Twitter and showed two versions - this one and one with a lighter background. 3-to-1 preferred the darker version so that is what I will present here.
The story of the image and complete processing walk-through can be seen on my website at:
https://cosgrovescosmos.com/projects/ngc4565Thanks for looking, and let me know if you have any questions!
CS,
Pat
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