NGC891 “Silver Galaxy”

NGC891 has been the “First light of the observatory. It was take just to test the system operation and seeing this image was really emotional for us, despite the intrinsic technical and artistic value. It was taken with the GSO telescope using a SBIG STF8300 CCD. Filter used was Lum and exposition time is unknown (no more than few hundreds seconds).

Also known as Caldwell 23 or Silver Sliver Galaxy, it is an edge-on unbarred spiral galaxy about 30 million light-years away in the constellation Andromeda. It was discovered by William Herschel on October 6, 1784. The galaxy is a member of the NGC 1023 group of galaxies in the Local Supercluster. It is visible in small to moderate size telescopes as a faint elongated smear of light with a dust lane visible in larger apertures.

In 1999, the Hubble Space Telescope imaged NGC 891 in infrared.

It seems to have the destiny to be the “first light of many observatories. In fact, In 2005, due to its attractiveness and scientific interest, NGC 891 was selected to be the first light image of the Large Binocular Telescope. In 2012, it was again used as a first light image of the Lowell Discovery Telescope with the Large Monolithic Imager.

A Supernova SN 1986J was discovered in it on August 21, 1986 at apparent magnitude 14.