NGC 4565

NGC 4565 is a 9.6th magnitude edge-on galaxy, one of the brightest members of the Coma I Galaxy Cloud. It is the largest edge-on spiral galaxy as seen from Earth. This galaxy is roughly 100,000 light years in diameter, and 30 million light years from us. Telescopically it is a fine streak of light with a prominent dark lane running across its length. Tracing the dark dust lane across the face of this galaxy is a challenging activity to undertake with a small telescope.