Silver Needle Galaxy

The Silver Needle Galaxy is my first target. Known as NGC 4244 or Caldwell 26, the SNG is a small spiral galaxy seen exactly edge-on. Its size is huge…46,000 lys, but it is rather far away at 10 million lys. In the core of the galaxy is a massive nuclear stellar cluster, similar in size to a globular cluster, such as M13.

The Silver Needle has subdued colors, thus its name. I pushed the number of my exposures to the highest so far…60 x 30 sec. for a stacked image of 30 minutes. Remember with the HyperStar lens at f 1.9, my equipment is producing 31 times more light-gathering time than conventional LRGB cameras. That’s the equivalent of 15.5 hours of exposure time.