"The Whirlpool"

So, thanks to the wonderful help of my wife Jen, and our fabulous babysitter Laura​​, I managed to get my telescope outside last night for the first time since surgery, and especially since the weather was so nice and clear (although, just a bit cold, but that was actually a good thing!).

I've never photographed a proper galaxy before. I've had Andromeda hiding in some of my shots of the Milky Way, but I've never specifically gone after an individual galaxy before last night. M51, or the Whirlpool Galaxy is an easy target from our house. It lies really close to Alkaid, which is the end star in the handle of Ursa Major (or the Big Dipper).

I had some issues finding this with my larger telescope, so I used my smaller one to take the pictures because it allowed a wider field of view for me to find it (I only had so much time to shoot because of the help I needed moving things, so rather than endlessly searching, I just went for what was easiest).

The galaxy is about 23 million (MILLION!!!) light years away. It's not close. There's also another galaxy known as M51A (the small fuzzy thing next to it), which it is interacting with. If you look to the right of the galaxy, you'll also see two much smaller, much fuzzier, much more distant galaxies in the shot.

This was a total of 40 shots, each of 35 seconds (about 23.3 minutes). I didn't guide last night because I haven't had a proper night to actually mess with the guidance system, but as the weather gets better, I'll definitely play with that more. I wish I had more actual time to image this because the detail would come out so much better, but fortunately, it's in the sky year round!

TECH Details for those who care:

40 subs x 35 seconds (~23.3 minutes)

William Optics ZenithStar 71mm f/5.9

Sony A6000, ISO 800

Stacked in PixInsight, with curves transformation and DBE.

Finished in Photoshop using StarTools.