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 31 million light-years away from Earth.
This is one of my favorite objects, because of how cool it is!
Image
Equipment:
- Nikon D90
- Nikon F5.6 500mm lens
- Bahintov mask
- Intervalometer
- Sky-Watcher Star adventurer
Acquisition
- ISO 800, F5.6, 30″ exposure time
- 281 light frames
- 150 dark frames
- 200 bias
- 200 flat frames
Processing:
- Stacked in Pixinsight
- Dynamic Background Extraction
- Deconvolution
- EZ Denoise
- ArcsinH stretch
- Extracted and Reapplied Luminance
- Annotated
Annotated Image:
One thought on “M51 – The Whirlpool Galaxy”
This is a great article about the Whirlpool Galaxy! I learned a lot about its appearance, distance, and how the image was captured. The Whirlpool Galaxy is a truly fascinating object in the night sky.