M51 or Whirlpool Galaxy
M51 is a spiral galaxy in constellation of Canes Venatici. It’s other name is Whirlpool Galaxy. In fact there is not a single galaxy but it’s two of them: one larger and another smaller. They are located in a distant approximately 23 million ly from us. M51 is one of the object which can be found in Messier’s catalogue of deep-sky objects. It’s frequent target of amateur astrophotographers on the northern hemisphere. The object is 9.0 magnitude and can be seen with binoculars and smaller telescopes.
M51 (Whirlpool Galaxy) @ Primož Cigler
The picture was taken on 8th of April 2007 with Orion Optics Europa 8″ f/4.5 on Vixen GP-DX mount, auto-guided. The exposure was 36 times 3 min, all the images combined with Iris and post-processed with Photoshop. The camera was unmodified Canon 350D at ISO800, RAW.
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