This is NGC4565, the Needle Galaxy. It is a spiral galaxy and located some 39 million light-years from Earth. It only spans over 45.000 light-years. The stars you se are all from within our own Milky Way – twice the size of NGC4565 – so they are less than 50.000 light-years away.
If you look closely, you can also see at least three more galaxies, NGC4562, NGC4565B and NGC4565C, the last two are more than 300 million light-years from Earth.
Imagine that you are looking at a 300 million year old photo, this is how long it took for the light from them to reach us!
Gurresta Observatory, 7-10 February 2022. 23h 50min integration (286x300sec). Skywatcher EQ6-R Pro, Explore Scientific APO ED 102/714 CF, R/F x0,8m, Optolong L-Pro, ASI533MC Pro, ASIAir Pro.
