NGC 4565, known as The Needle Galaxy, is one of my favorite galaxies to observe visually from a dark sky site. It's a spiral galaxy seen almost edge-on that is about 39 million light-years away from us. Looking through an eyepiece from a dark sky site, it's easy to see the dark lane spiting the galaxy lengthwise with one side that is brighter than the other. I took this photograph with my home-made telescope from my backyard that has significant light pollution (Bortle 8-9). I'm very pleased that I was able to capture the amount of detail I did in the dust lane.
Photographer: Rick Scott
Set 1: April 26 & 27, 2019 at 8:49 PM - 12:46 AM MST
Set 2: May 3 & 4, 2019 at 8:36 PM - 12:40 AM MST
Telescope: home-made 10" f/4.6 Lurie-Houghton
Mount: Losmandy HGM Titan with Gemini 2
Guiding: Orion ShortTube 80, ZWO ASI120MM Mini, PHD2
Camera: Canon EOS 60Da digital camera
Filter: Optolong L-Pro
Exposures: 86 x 300 sec, f/4.6, ISO 400 in raw mode
81 flats, 80 bias, or no dark frames
JaZ 2 Observatory
Software: DeepSkyStacker (DSS) for alignment, stacking, and RAW conversion; Adobe Photoshop CS6 for image processing
Updated: May 5, 2019