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| About this picture: |
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The famous Whirlpool galaxy Messier 51 (M51, NGC 5194) is one of the most conspicuous, and probably the most wellknown spiral galaxy in the sky. M51 was one of Charles Messier's original discoveries: He discovered it on October 13, 1773, when observing a comet, and described it as a "very faint nebula, without stars" which is difficult to see. M51 is the dominating member of a small group of galaxies, which also contains M63 and a number of fainter galaxies. As it is about 37 million light years distant and so conspicuous, it is actually a big and luminous galaxy. The value of M51's (and the whole group's) distance is still not very well known. Our value, of 37 Mly, is based on photometric methods and e.g. given by Kenneth Glyn Jones. Some authors give significantly lower values (less than 20 Mly), but a recent (2001) STScI Press Release gave 31 million light years. Scope: 12" LX200 OTA @ f6.3 Mount: MI250 Camera: SBIG ST200XM,CFW10 Astrodon Gen II filters Guiding: SSautoguider with Maxim Dl. LLRGB image, L= 38X10 min. RGB= 32X5 min. Bin 2X. Total exposure time = 14 hrs 30 min Images acquired with Maximum Dl, combined with CCDStack, final processing with PS CS2 Images were taken at the fully automated Burkes Observatory on 3/21 3/22 3/23 2009 using ACP. |