Those who follow my pictures closely will notice that I have imaged this galaxy many times. It’s because I love this galaxy and try to image it every year to get better results than the last year to apply my new techniques that I acquire over the year. The Whirlpool Galaxy, also known as Messier 51a, M51a, or NGC 5194, is an interacting grand-design spiral galaxy with an active galactic nucleus in the constellation Canes Venatici. It was the first galaxy to be classified as a spiral galaxy. Recently it was estimated to be 23 ± 4 million light-years from the Milky Way, but different methods yield distances between 15 and 35 million light-years. The galaxy and its companion on right, which it is interacting with, are easily observed by amateur astronomers. The Whirlpool Galaxy is also a popular target for professional astronomers, who study it to further understand galaxy structure (particularly structure associated with the spiral arms) and galaxy interactions. I took this image over 13.5 hours (Luminance filter (13 images of 30 minutes) and adding 7 images of 20 minutes each of each color (Red, Blue, Green)).

I imaged this galaxy with my new telescope Stellarvue SV130 f/6.6. Since the magnification is much lesser (680mm), the sharpness is not as much in this picture as the picture I took earlier.

Integration time (total 525 minutes i.e. ~8.5 hours) is as follows:

L – 10 min x 39; RGB of 5 min x 15 each