NGC4565, The Needle Galaxy

The Needle Galaxy, a large barred spiral galaxy seen almost perfectly edge-on.  The name was given to its narrow profile.  This is a bright galaxy that Charles Messier missed.  William Herschel discovered this galaxy in 1785.

NGC4565 is between 30 and 50 million light years away, and is about 100,000 light years across (One light year = about 6,000,000,000,000 miles) , and is located in the constellation Coma Berenices.  The small galaxy on the top right is NGC4562.

This image is a composite stack of 10 - 5 minute exposures taken with a Canon T3 at ISO 400.  The telescope used was an Orion 8", f/5 Newtonian reflector.  It is about 16 X 2 arcminutes in size.