Although the galaxy NGC 4244 is neither faint nor small, it is not really easy to capture it with moderate exposure times. In an early spring night at Schrick occasional thin cloud cover kept me from collecting more than 4.3 hours exposure, which one might consider marginal for this difficult object. The galaxy's luminosity is "diluted" to a wide area, which makes it quite a faint appearance.

However, I am happy having been able to capture some of the dark bands of interstellar dust in front of the galaxy and quite a few bright knots of star formation areas in the outskirts. Don't forget to click on the picture to see more detail. Because of the edge-on perspective the object is nick-named "silver needle galaxy" and belongs to the Hubble class Sc, which means that the central bulge is of moderate size compared to the spiral arms. With an approximate distance of 12 million light years NGC 4244 may be considered being part of our galactic neighbourhood.

In 1787 William Herschel discovered the object in the constellation of the hunting dogs.