Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Canes Venatici (CVn)  ·  Contains:  IC 4263  ·  M 51  ·  NGC 5169  ·  NGC 5194  ·  NGC 5195  ·  NGC 5198  ·  Whirlpool Galaxy
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M51, The Whirlpool Galaxy,  LRGB, riot1013
M51, The Whirlpool Galaxy,  LRGB
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M51, The Whirlpool Galaxy, LRGB

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
M51, The Whirlpool Galaxy,  LRGB, riot1013
M51, The Whirlpool Galaxy,  LRGB
Powered byPixInsight

M51, The Whirlpool Galaxy, LRGB

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Description

One of my absolute favorite late winter/early spring targets, The Whirlpool Galaxy, also known as Messier 51a, M51a, and 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. Its distance is estimated to be 23 million light-years away from Earth.

This image contains data from both this year and last year; the majority being from the last week or so. Unfortunately I have been dealing with some higher than normal windy nights and overall pretty terrible seeing conditions so the sharpness of this image has suffered. I still think it is a "pretty" image but technically I feel like it is lacking.

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M51, The Whirlpool Galaxy,  LRGB, riot1013