NGC 4565
Characteristics:
Magnitude: 10.19
Size: 14'
Distance: 30 million light years
RA: 12h 36m 33.5s
Dec: 25 degrees 57' 16"
PA: plus 22 degrees
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, best seen in the links to the
larger images above. More information about NGC 4565 may be found
here.
Photographic
Details:
Date: April 1 and 2, 2010
Scope: Vixen VC200L at f6.4 on the
Takahashi NJP
Mount
Autoguider: SBIG ST-402
Camera: ST8300 -20C
Filters: Astronomik
Clear (unblocked) filter
Exposures: Clear 96 x 5' =
480'. Total exposure 8
hours
Post-processing:
Calibrated in Maxim, aligned and
stacked using DeepSkyStacker, followed
by DDP
in ImagesPlus (IP). Further processing in Photoshop CS4.
Please
note: Graphics on this website may not be reproduced without
author permission.
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