Astrophoto: Deep, Deep Look at NGC 891

35 hours of exposure time by R. Jay GaBany resulted in this deep, detailed view of NGC 891. Credit: R. Jay Gabany.

This image is a “first light” for noted amateur astronomer R. Jay GaBany’s new observatory, and it might be the deepest, most detailed view of the iconic edge-on spiral galaxy NCG 891. This first photograph from his new observatory in California includes almost 35 hours of exposure time! “As a result, hundreds of small, much more distant galaxies can be seen in the image as well as very small scale structures across the galaxy’s edge,” Jay wrote us. If you go to Jay’s website, Cosmotography.com, you can see larger versions where you can see very faint dust clouds, called cirrus, that have never been imaged within NGC 891 at this scale.