Astr110 Photography Projects, Spring 2006

NGC 891 , Brian Smit

NGC 891 is a classic, edge-on galaxy exhibiting a fine example of a dust ring, seen here in this picture as a solid, dark line running through the center of the galaxy. It was discovered officially by William Herschel on October 6, 1794. It is officially regarded as a spiral galaxy, although because of its edge on position, this is hard to ascertain. It can be found in the Andromeda Constellation. It is located at a distance of ten million light years from earth. The Galaxy itself is approximately 26,000 light years across.

This image was taken using four different filters; blue, red, green, and clear. due to a small gust of wind, several of the small stars in the larger image. and some of the bigger stars in the small image may appeared distorted, or even doubled. In this image, you can clearly see the solid ring of dust traveling along the center of this galaxy, as well as it's severely tilted position relative to earth. Although it is difficult to see, this is a spiral galaxy, similar in many ways to our own. The colors that can be seen in this image are actually a composite from the light coming from trillions of different colored stars.

References:
http://www.seds.org/messier/xtra/ngc/n0891.html