Eye of a Needle

The Needle Galaxy NGC 4565 and NGC 4562- Bradford Robotic Telescope- Galaxy Camera

The Open University and Telescope Org. now run the Bradford Robotic Telescope. Its new name is  the 'Autonomous Robotic Telescope' which for some unknown reason always plays in my head as the 'Enormous Turnip'. I guess that, having read the 'Enormous Turnip' over and over again as a bedtime story for children and grandchildren, it lurks somewhere in my unconcious mind.

The Autonomous Robotic Telescope is off-line at the moment so I await the day when I can program it again to take new  images and hopefully the spectra of stars.

The above image was taken last year and I have just got around to processing the data. When I looked carefully I noticed that a satellite or piece of space debris in low earth orbit can be seen streaking across the galaxy narrowly missing its core and at an angle of about 2 degrees to the galactic plane. Quite annoying in some ways but interesting in others.

The Needle Galaxy or NGC 4565 may be seen through quite small amateur telescopes but was missed by Charles Messier when he created his Messier list of nebulae. As a consequence, the Needle Galaxy  does not have a 'M' number.

NGC 4565 and its neighbour galaxy NGC 4562- visible on the above image as an elongated smudge bottom right, are aprroximately 40 million light years away in the constellation Coma Berenices.

The Needle Galaxy has a diameter of some 100,000 light years and has a pronounced central bulge which together with an obscuring dust lane can be seen clearly above.

Credits: Bradford University, The Open University, Telescope Org and Nasa.