Recently, Al Ernst was kind enough to send me his work on the "Silver Sliver Galaxy", a.k.a. NGC 891. It's an unbarred spiral galaxy about 30 million light-years from Earth with a diameter of about 60,000 light-years. Compared to our closest galactic neighbor, the "Andromeda Galaxy" which is about 2.5 million light-years away and about 220,000 light-years in diameter, the Silver Sliver is much harder to see from his back yard observatory.
NGC 891's apparent magnitude is +10.8 is best seen through a medium-sized amateur telescope of about 8" in diameter or more, making Al's Celestron C14 main telescope ideal for working out its details as seen in his photo below. The dark dust lane surrounding the galaxy's disk is easily seen.
The image was recorded earlier this winter from his home observatory in Bridgewater, NJ using his C14 f8 and QSI 583 Camera with Green, Blue, and Ha filters on 5 and 10-minute subs and processed in Nebulosity and Photoshop. Thanks Al.
Keith
