NGC 891 - The Silver Sliver Galaxy

NGC 891, the Silver Sliver Galaxy, is 30 million light years from us in Andromeda. This galaxy is viewed edge on and is very similar in size and structure to our own Milky Way. This object was discovered by William Herschel in 1784. Also referred to as Caldwell 23, an unusual feature of this galaxy is the presence of vertical spikes in the central dust lane, clearly visible in this picture. It’s unknown what has caused this, but because this galaxy is very active in forming stars, it’s thought that these spikes may be the result of supernova explosions punching columns of dust and gas out of its galactic plane.

This was only my second real deep-sky image. I reprocessed the original data from 2020 in January 2026. It's not the greatest NGC 891 image, but it will do. As my wonderful teacher Ron Brecher says, "Good data never goes bad."