NGC 4565 - Needle Galaxy

NGC 4565 - Needle Galaxy: This is a nice, prominent, northern hemisphere galaxy in Coma Berenices. It is near the galactic pole, and it's edge on orientation excellently shows the central galactic bulge and dark dust lanes. This is one that was missed in Messier's catalog, but can be seen through a small telescope.

NGC: 4565
Other Catalogs: Caldwell 38
Right Ascension: 12h 36m 21s
Declination: 25° 59'
Apparent Magnitude: 10.4

Date: June 2009
Equipment:
Telescope: Meade 16" Schmidt Cassegrain with f6.3 reducer
Camera: SBIG ST-10XE
Guiding: Meade 5" refractor/DSI Pro/PHD

Exposure: L: 7x5minutes

Processing Notes: Data acquisition with CCDSoft. Reduced and aligned in CCDStack. Subs combined in Sigma Beta. Adjusted curves and levels. Slight blur on the dim areas and sharpening on non-star bright areas.
Scale: ~1.0"/pixel

Links to images of this object on other sites:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap090428.html

Additional Comments: This image was taken over the course of several hours while fiddling with the declination alignment of the telescope. Declination guiding was turned off for these images.

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