We view the spiral galaxy NGC 4565 edge-on, and it is known as the Needle galaxy due to its elongated shape. This bright galaxy lies about 50 million light years away from us in the constellation Coma Berenices.
I had already captured this object last year:
https://astrovirusblog.wordpress.com/2017/03/26/the-needle-galaxy/
But it’s very noisy and I wanted to make a better version now that I own a cooled astro camera. Again, shooting from within the same bright city light pollution (which makes it much harder to capture broadband objects such as galaxies).
The full wide-field image shows that several other galaxies are situated in the background.
Elliptical galaxy NGC 4562 sits in the upper right, while 3 other NGC galaxies can be seen on the left of the Needle galaxy. I’ve annotated this in the image below. The weakest stars in this magnitude are around magnitude 18.
Date: 5 May 2018
Telescope: Teleskop-Service 80/480 triplet with 2″ TS 0.79X reducer/flattener and Baader 2″ UV/IR filter
Camera: ZWO ASI1600MM-C with EFW-8 and ZWO 31mm filters
Mount: Skywatcher EQ5 Pro
Exposure: 2.8 hours
L: 114 x 60 sec (gain: 74, bin 1×1, -15C)
RGB: 19/16/17 x 60 sec (gain: 74, bin 1×1, -15C)
Software: APT, PHD2, EQMOD, PixInsight
SQM: 17.5
Astro Virus 