NGC 4565 (The Needle Galaxy)

Continuing on with the run of good weather we have been experiencing recently, last Wednesday, the 22nd April I was able to turn my attention to another galaxy in Coma Berenices, NGC 4565 which has been nicknamed the Needle Galaxy. NGC 4565 lies close to the North Galactic Pole, a direction which is perpendicular to the plane of our galaxy and so is free from the obscuration of the galactic disc. This explains why so many more galaxies are clearly visible in this direction. Add to this there is the Virgo Cluster of galaxies that lies along the southern edge of this constellation and into the northern part of Virgo. The Moon was only two days to first quarter, so whilst causing some light interference, it wasn't too much of a worry. Here is what I obtained after 296x15s (1 hour 14 mins) of observation:-

The Needle is in the centre of the frame and, as you can see, its sharp shape comes from the fact that this spiral galaxy is seen edge on. There is another large object seen at the far right of this image and that is NGC 4494 - a large elliptical galaxy. The first frame was taken at 22:41 BST and the last at 00:13 on the 23rd. The Astro filter was employed and the gain was 60. The image was processed in Stellar Studio using auto settings. The saturation was increased in Photoshop and the image binned x2.

A more close up view of this galaxy is shown below (using the unbinned image):- 

I have increased the sharpening in this version. You can see clearly the central bulge of the galaxy and a dark dust lane that traverses it. Interestingly, the disc does not appear to be symmetric about the galaxy's centre. There upper half of the disc extends out further than the lower half. This may be due to interaction with other galaxies. There is another galaxy visible to the right and this NGC 4562.

All text and images © Duncan Hale-Sutton 2026