After a hiatus of almost a year, I wanted to do some astrophotography again. The target is the NGC 891 galaxy in Andromeda. It is a very nice edge-on galaxy showing the dust band in this picture. I was not able to spot it visually using my 150mm (6 inch) f/5 Newtonian telescope under a hazy suburban sky on our roof-top terrace.

Apart from NGC 891, there are some background galaxies faintly visible in this image, all of them belong to the Galaxy Cluster Abell 347, the most notable among them are: NGC 898, 906, 909 and MGC +7-6-6.

You can move your mouse pointer over the image to see an annotated version.

This image leaves a lot to be desired:

• More exposures should reduce the noise visible as a grainy texture (longer individual exposures would need a better mount or an autoguiding setup)
• Better focusing (more patience on my side)
• A coma corrector to improve the image from my newtonian telescope.
• A light pollution reduction filter like a UHC would improve the contrast to the sky background.
• Use a real flat field image.

I have also created a file to view this image in the context of the Google Earth application NG 891.kmz (3MB)