This stunning interaction between two galaxies was the first image I processed where I was happy with both the color and the detail. There is, of course, much more detail to be found with more data… but this is what I have for now. The Whirlpool galaxy was the first spiral galaxy to be discovered and classified as such. You can see there’s two parts to this galaxy with the formation on the left. However, it wasn’t until the advent of radio astronomy that astronomers could prove these two gargantuan structures are interacting with one another.
M51 is approximately 23 million light years away from earth. This data for this image was captured with an AT8RC telescope and QSI683WSG camera using Astrodon RGB filters, mounted on an Atlas EQ-G mount helped by a Lodestar X2 guide camera. The composition of the data was as follows:
Data capture was orchestrated by Sequence Generator Pro, guided by OpenPHD2 and later processed in PixInsight. See more info about this image on its Astrobin page, and read more about M51 on wikipedia.
And, just for kicks… here’s the original sketch of this galaxy from 1845 by Lord Rosse. I think I nailed it!
