Whirlpool Galaxy M 51 - 2024-Feb-11 (Scott Fisher)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Canes Venatici (CVn) · Contains: HD117403 · HD117815 · HD118019 · IC 4263 · IC 4277 · IC 4278 · M 51 · NGC 5169 · NGC 5173 · NGC 5194 · NGC 5195 · NGC 5198 · NGC 5229 · Whirlpool Galaxy

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Whirlpool Galaxy M 51 - 2024-Feb-11

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Whirlpool Galaxy M 51 - 2024-Feb-11

Whirlpool Galaxy - M51
Svbony 503 102ED
Canon T5i - not modified for astrophotography
AVX, ZWO 30F4, ASI 120mini
Svbony CLS filter
140X5min subs at 800ISO or 11hrs of imaging, plus calibration frames
APT, PHD2, Siril, Photoshop, StarNet2
Imaged from my bortle 5 backyard over two nights this week.

I used the field flattener/reducer for this image, something I don't often do with galaxy imaging. This reduces my focal length from 714 to 571, but increases my field of view and prevents elongated stars at the edge of the image. I normally would crop the image to remove the upper left and bottom gradients, however there is a visible galaxy in the bottom left corner that I didn't want to crop out.

The Whirlpool Galaxy, also known as Messier 51a (M51a) or NGC 5194, is an interacting grand-design spiral galaxy with a Seyfert 2 active galactic nucleus. It lies in the constellation Canes Venatici, and was the first galaxy to be classified as a spiral galaxy. It is 32 million light-years away and 109,000 light-years in diameter. For comparison, IC 4263 - noted in the annotated image is a Spiral Galaxy at a distance from Earth of 130,951,785.64 light years. Additionally, NGC 5198 is a Elliptical Galaxy noted in the annotated image and is a distance from Earth of 158,022,764.99 light years. Imaging with these results, of galaxies at these immense distances continually blows my mind!!

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The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

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Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	9193662
PixInsight job	8EWA7743NX4V197R1DBNI1PF5R0NLSEJ
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	13h29m54s.64
RA (top/left)	13h25m31s.90
RA (top/right)	13h25m46s.95
RA (bottom/right)	13h34m07s.71
RA (bottom/left)	13h34m11s.95

Dec (center)	+47°10′10″.9
Dec (top/left)	+48°15′40″.5
Dec (top/right)	+46°03′30″.8
Dec (bottom/right)	+46°04′07″.5
Dec (bottom/left)	+48°16′18″.6

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Whirlpool Galaxy M 51 - 2024-Feb-11

Whirlpool Galaxy M 51 - 2024-Feb-11

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Whirlpool Galaxy M 51 - 2024-Feb-11

Whirlpool Galaxy M 51 - 2024-Feb-11

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