If the Pinwheel galaxy is a face-on galaxy the Needle galaxy is edge-on and got the name for its narrow profile, and the estimated distance from earth is 30-50 million light years.
What is a light year? It is a measure of distance namely the distance light travel in one year. Light speed is 300 000 km per second and in one second light travels 7.5 laps around the earth. And it takes about 8 minutes for the rays of light from the sun to warm us here on earth. So the distance to objects like the Needle galaxy is hard to comprehend. And it is hard to understand how a whole galaxy like this fit in the camera sensor. How can I detect so many details in the galaxy despite the vast distance? And how does the galaxy look like today, some 30 million years later?
Many questions, few answers…
This galaxy was photographed in three sessions, first on 17-20 of April 2022 where I took 60 x 300 second RGB images with the ZWO 183 MC camera through the Celestron 8″ EdgeHD telescope. The second session took place between March 29-31 2022 with a total of 176 L, R, G and B 180 second exposures. This time I used the ZWO 2600MM camera with the same telescope. The third session was done in April 2025 where I added Luminance data with the ZWO 2600MM camera for greater details. Total exposure time so far is approximately 25 hours. Because of its beauty I will return to this Galaxy with my telescope and camera in the future…