Subject: M51 (Whirlpool Galaxy): Composed of a dwarf galaxy, NGC-5195, on the left, and its gravitationally interacting galaxy NGC-5194: a grand-design spiral galaxy in Canes Venatici. Roughly 23-25 million light-years distant, NGC-5194 is about a third the size of our Milky Way.

Capture notes: Taken on dark nights, the main notable thing about this image was that it was my first attempt to fully automate my capture process. At the moment I'm using APT (Astro Photography Tool) and if they deliver meridian flip support in the next few months I'll probably stick with it. Auto-focusing has been a challenge -- not that you can tell, but my red channel was a little out of focus for this capture -- but I'm sure with a little patience it'll get better. In any event, I was very excited to get a good night's sleep the night I captured the RGB, and to wake up and find the mount had neatly parked itself at the end.

Processing notes: My L flats were off somehow, so I used PixInsight's DBE to do an additional flat-like correction. Otherwise, this used a pretty ordinary LRGB workflow, with color calibrated vias PhotometricColorCalibration, and with a bit of saturation added by one application of curves.