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| NGC 5194 and NGC 5195. Image Credit: Pip Stakkert - Jodrell Plank Observatory. Data Credits: telescope.org, Open Observatories, Open University and Jodrell Plank Observatory. |
"The interacting galaxies, known as Messier 51 or The Whirlpool, ride high in the late spring Northern Hemisphere sky, and in the constellation Canes Venatici. This pair of gravitationally interacting galaxies are some 31 million light years distant and the larger of the two is approximately 77,000 light years across. M51 was the first galaxy to be identified as having a spiral structure in 1845 by Lord Rosse from his observatory in Ireland.
We first pointed the Jodrell Plank Observatory's little Seestar S30 at this galactic pair and thought how small these huge galactic structures looked when imaged with a telescope having a large field of vision.
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| Uncropped and stacked image downloaded from the Seestar S30. Credit: Pip Stakkert. |
We decided to use the PIRATE robotic telescope on Mount Teide Tenerife to capture M 51 and apply the data, imaged in white light and hydrogen alpha wavelengths, as a luminance channel for the colour data we captured with the Seestar S30. The Seestar has an aperture of 30mm and the PIRATE telescope has an aperture of 600mm. So our image is a veritable 'little and large' collaboration. The two data sets were combined using the excellent and venerable software 'Registar'.
An interesting feature of both our above images is, the 'tidal feature', or northwest plume of gas emanating from the galactic centre of the larger NGC 5194 and extending some 140,000 light years to NGC 5195. Close inspection of the top combined image shows a burst of star formation underway towards the the centre of NGC 5194" - Joel Cairo CEO of the Jodrell Plank Observatory (The Uk's most Easterly Astronomical Observatory).
