Needle Galaxy

The Needle Galaxy, catalogued as NGC 4565 and Caldwell 38, is a prominent edge-on spiral galaxy located approximately 40 million light-years away in the constellation Coma Berenices. Discovered by astronomer William Herschel in 1785, it is renowned for its narrow, needle-like profile, which conceals its spiral structure from Earth's perspective.

Despite appearing as a thin sliver of light, the galaxy is a giant, actually more luminous than the Andromeda Galaxy, with a diameter of roughly 100,000 to 176,000 light-years, making it comparable in size to the Milky Way. It is often cited as an excellent example of what our own galaxy might look like viewed from the outside.