Probably the most photogenic galaxy is called Whirlpool galaxy, located in the constellation Canes Venatici, close to the Big Dipper. It’s approximately 23 million light years from the Earth and its spirals have 43 thousand light years in diameter, which makes it 1/3 of a size of Milky Way. Whirlpool galaxy is accompanied by dwarf galaxy M51b or NGC5195, which is located at the end of the longest spiral.
As usual, I made my first picture of this galaxy by DSLR and I was not quite happy with the quality, therefore I waited one year and repeated with cooled astro-camera and here it is:
Telescope: | Newton 254/1000 mm |
Aperture: | 254 mm |
Focal length: | 1000 mm |
Mount | Skywatcher EQ-6 |
Autoguiding | Orion Mini Autoguider |
Camera: | Moravian instruments G2 8300M @-30C |
Corrector: | GPU 2" Comacorrector |
Filters: | Hutech IDAS LPS, Baader RGB |
Exposure: | 28xLPS 300s bin 1x1, 18RGB, 200s, bin 2x2 |