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NGC 891 (Caldwell 23) · Spiral Galaxy
Silver Sliver Galaxy
A textbook edge-on spiral galaxy in Andromeda, presenting a thin silver needle of starlight bisected by a sharp central dust lane.
NGC 891 is a spiral galaxy we happen to see almost exactly edge-on, about 30 million light-years away in Andromeda. Its near-perfect side-on orientation reveals a knife-thin disk crossed by a dramatic dark lane of dust — a structure remarkably similar to how our own Milky Way would appear from the outside.
Discovered by William Herschel in 1784, it is nicknamed the Silver Sliver (also the Silver Streak or Outer Limits Galaxy). Long exposures reveal faint filaments of dust extending vertically out of the disk, lifted by supernovae and stellar winds.
This view was taken with the colour camera on the 200 mm Newtonian. The thin galaxy sits modestly in a wide field of foreground stars; the frame has been cropped and colour-balanced from the linear stack.
Discovered by William Herschel in 1784, it is nicknamed the Silver Sliver (also the Silver Streak or Outer Limits Galaxy). Long exposures reveal faint filaments of dust extending vertically out of the disk, lifted by supernovae and stellar winds.
This view was taken with the colour camera on the 200 mm Newtonian. The thin galaxy sits modestly in a wide field of foreground stars; the frame has been cropped and colour-balanced from the linear stack.
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