NGC 891
NGC 891 – one galaxy on edge, others in the distance
A slender spindle of light stands almost upright on the left, divided lengthwise by a dark, uneven stripe. NGC 891 presents its disc nearly edge-on. Its bright central swelling and the fading light towards the ends reveal the structure, while the spiral arms largely overlap along our line of sight.
Dust draws the shape. The dark lane is not an empty gap. Dust in the disc dims the stars behind it, making both the stellar distribution and the material between the stars visible in one image. NGC 891 lies approximately 30 million light-years away in Andromeda.
The background has depth of its own. Small extended patches and narrow streaks appear among the point-like stars on the right. The overlays identify NGC 906, NGC 909 and Z 538-59, among others. The first two lie in the sky field of the Abell 347 galaxy cluster. NASA places that cluster at roughly 240 million light-years, far beyond NGC 891. A small patch along the same line of sight does not automatically belong to that cluster.
A star can appear brighter than a galaxy. Orange HD 14771 is a foreground star in our Milky Way. Its prominence and the tiny background galaxies tell us little about their physical sizes. The frame brings together our stellar neighbourhood, a large spiral galaxy and a much more distant galaxy field; the two close-ups separate these perspectives.
Where in the sky
The rectangle is this image's real field of view, with its measured rotation — not a symbol. Constellation figures and star positions come from SIMBAD.
3 entries sit within 27° of each other here — click a field to jump to it.
Crops
NGC 891 · dust lane
NGC 891 – the dust lane in profile
6.7′ × 16.4′·02h 22m 30.89s +42° 20′ 19.8″
The narrow disc fills this portrait close-up. Its dust lane crosses the bright central region, with uneven edges along its length. Light on either side of the dark stripe reveals the thickness of the stellar disc. The structural marker sits on the central dust lane; it does not identify an additional celestial object.
The distant galaxy field
Galaxies behind the star field
21.7′ × 12.8′·02h 24m 36.23s +42° 07′ 28.1″
NGC 906 and NGC 909 lie near the right edge, with Z 538-59 farther left among the foreground stars. Their small discs and patches of light differ from the round stellar images. HD 14771 adds a warm colour contrast. The catalogue markers identify objects without implying that every marked galaxy shares a distance or is interacting.
Acquisition and processing
Acquisition. 51 × 180 s = 2 h 33 min, recorded between 10 and 17 September 2026 in Friedrichsdorf. Camera: ZWO ASI585MC Air, Askar 120APO at 840 mm focal length, broadband, gain 200. Exposure counts and dates come from the acquisition metadata and integration report; the telescope identification was confirmed by the photographer.
Processing. All 51 selected light frames were registered, locally normalised and integrated; the run includes 2× drizzle integration. The documented PiMagic workflow uses spectrophotometric colour calibration, gradient correction, sharpening, noise reduction and separate star and object layers. Drizzle refines the sampling grid but does not guarantee twice the actual resolution. This entry uses the curated AVIF version with an HDR gain map and an SDR rendering.
Field and overlays. The current file measures 7680 × 4320 pixels. Its astrometric solution gives approximately 0.355″ per pixel and a field of 0.758° × 0.426°. Catalogue positions and explicitly identified structural landmarks are projected through this solution. Marker circles are locating aids, not measurements of object boundaries.