M 63 The Sunflower Galaxy (Roland Schliessus)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Canes Venatici (CVn) · Contains: M 63 · NGC 5055 · Sunflower Galaxy

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M 63 The Sunflower Galaxy

Link: http://www.roland-schliessus-astro.de/

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M 63 The Sunflower Galaxy

Link: http://www.roland-schliessus-astro.de/

Messier 63 (also referred to as NGC 5055) is a spiral galaxy with dimensions of 12.6′ × 7.2′ and an apparent magnitude of 8.5 mag in the constellation Hounds in the northern sky. The object, also known as the Sunflower Galaxy, is approximately 25 million (depending on the source, 30 or 37 million [4]) light-years away from the solar system and has a diameter of approximately 50,000 (65,000) light-years. Unusual and eponymous are the many nodule-like condensations in its spiral arms that are particularly clearly visible in the Spitzer image; these are star formation regions and glowing gas clouds.

In very long exposure images, a stellar current in the form of an arc extending 14 arc minutes and only 1.6 arc minutes wide is visible. A detailed study by Taylor S. Chonis et al. comes to the conclusion that a dwarf galaxy with around 100 million solar masses was swallowed up here. The tidal interaction during the tearing also created the wide stream of stars that is still visible today.

The very bright central region of M 63, which extends over around 1000 light-years, is also interesting. It surrounds an active core and exceeds its ambient brightness by six times, and in H-alpha light even by 25 times. The rotation speeds measured here suggest a central black hole of almost a billion solar masses.

The object was discovered on June 14, 1779 by French astronomer Pierre Méchain.

=================== Source: Wikipedia ====================

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This table shows the number of distinct astrophotographers who have been assigned and IOTD/TP award compared to the total number of images awarded.
	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
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This table shows the distribution of awards per subject type, compared to the popularity of images of that subject type.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
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	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
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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.

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
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.
Promotions by Submitters When 3 distinct Submitters promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for Top Pick status. This requirement, in addition to anonymization of images and distribution to only a subset of them, prevents biases and ensures that the best images are selected.
Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	9429208
PixInsight job	KHRFDRJ5LULI9YCIMKCMLZHOBMR7THN4
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	13h15m46s.629
RA (top/left)	13h16m04s.344
RA (top/right)	13h14m33s.368
RA (bottom/right)	13h15m29s.103
RA (bottom/left)	13h16m59s.999

Dec (center)	+42°01′05″.94
Dec (top/left)	+42°17′33″.53
Dec (top/right)	+42°10′55″.82
Dec (bottom/right)	+41°44′38″.17
Dec (bottom/left)	+41°51′12″.89

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M 63 The Sunflower Galaxy

M 63 The Sunflower Galaxy

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M 63 The Sunflower Galaxy

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