NGC 891 Spiral Galaxy

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About this Image

NGC 891 is a classic example of an edge-on spiral galaxy bisected by a dark dust lane, seen from the side, so it's spiral structure is hidden from our line of sight. Subtle dust structures perpendicular to the disc and blue star burst areas can be seen along the plane of the galaxy. Recent observations indicate that NGC 891 may actually be a barred spiral galaxy, making it an SBb galaxy according to Hubble classification type.
The distance to NGC 891 is 9 million light years. North is to the right.

Checkout a professional reference image of NGC 891 (Kitt Peak's 3.5m WIYN): 1.

Below you see a crop on the center of the above image in 40/80% size.

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Technical Details
Optics

16" cassegrain in secondary focus at f/10

Mount MK-100 GEM
Camera SBIG STL-11000M at -25C, internal filter wheel, AO-L
Filters Astronomik LRGB
Date Sep 30 - Oct 17, 2006.
Location Wildon/Austria
Sky Conditions mag 5 sky, seeing 1.6-2", temperature 5-12 C
Exposure L:R:G:B = 360:120:120:120 minutes (30-minute sub-exposures),
Processing Image aquisition in Maxim 4.56; image calibration, preprocessing, deconvolution in CCDStack; final processing, highpass and unsharp filtering in Photoshop CS2;