NGC 4565
Characteristics:
Magnitude: 10.19
Size: 14'
Distance: 30 million light years
RA: 12h 36m 33.5s
Dec: 25 degrees 57' 16"
Description:
NGC 4565 is located in the constellation Coma
Berenices (Bernice's Hair) and is perhaps
the most famous example of an edge-on spiral galaxy. It is a
relatively bright, needle-like structure when viewed visually in 8-10"
scopes, although the intricate central dust lane can be best
appreciated on photographs. Lord Rosse described this galaxy in
1855 as "a beautiful object, very well seen in the finding eyepiece;
the whole nebula is much broader at the nucleus than elsewhere,
narrowing off suddenly, and the nucleus projects into dark space"
(Burnham's Celestial Handbook, Volume 2, page 688, Dover Publishing,
1977). Massive dust lanes that bisect spiral galaxies into top
and bottom halves such as this are quite common and can be seen in
NGC891, NGC3628,
as well as in the Great Rift of our own Milky Way galaxy. There
are many
other galaxies present in this FOV, as shown in this rollover image
(labels from StarryNight Pro).
Photographic
Details:
Date: April 15,
2005
Scope: Takahashi
FS-102 at f6 with TOA-130 focal reducer, on the G11 Losmandy
Mount.
Autoguider: SBIG STV with
e-finder.
Camera: SXV-H9
Filter: Astronomik
R, G, B, plus clear filter set.
Exposures: L:R:G:B.
120:20:20:20. Luminance unbinned; RGB binned 2x2.
Conditions: Temperature 45 degrees F, dropping to 32
degrees at end of session; good
transparency; average to poor seeing; clear. First quarter moon
was out.
Post-processing: Calibrated
with flats and bias frames (no darks) in ImagesPlus.
Aligned, combined (Min/Max Excluded Average), and DDP stretched in
ImagesPlus. Subsequent
levels and curves adjustments in Photoshop CS (16 bit format).
Russ Croman's GradientXTerminator
plug-in for Photoshop was very effective in removing gradients.
Final sharpening done with high pass filtering at a
radius of 0.8.
Please
note: Graphics on this website may not be reproduced without
author permission.
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