Astrophoto: Stunning Detailed Look at the Whirlpool Galaxy by John Chumack

By Nancy Atkinson - March 9, 2012 at 1:42 PM UTC | Extragalactic
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Wow! Astrophotographer John Chumack has done it again with a spectacular, long exposure view of the Whirlpool Galaxy, M51. "This is my best and most detailed image of M51 to date, and now my longest exposure on a single object," John said. "Definitely a lot of work, but I now feel it was worth all the processing time, which actually exceeded the 17.5 hours of imaging time!"

Visible are faint tidal tail structure details. "I can see several dust lane structures running through the tidal tail as well as faint background galaxies behind the tidal tail!" John said.

This long exposure image was taken over seven separate nights in early 2010, 2011 with John's homemade 16" F4.5 Newtonian Scope. See more details below, or on

Flickr.

You should also check out John's website,

Galactic Images,

where you can see all his beautiful handiwork.

John used a QHY8 Cooled CCD camera and a modified Canon Rebel Xsi DSLR camera. Data from both cameras were used, and both employed a celestron coma corrector and Astronomiks CLS filter employed.

Calibrated Bias, Darks, Flats, Darks for flats, in Deep Sky Stacker via Sigma Reject, both camera data sets were combined and resized to match in Maxim DL, initially color balanced in Nebulosity, Gradient XT was used to remove Light pollution Gradients, Luminance Layered and final color balance in Adobe.

The Whirlpool Spiral Galaxy is actually two colliding Galaxies in the Constellation of Canes Venatici, and can be found a few degrees from the end star in handle of the Big Dipper. The smaller companion that M51 is colliding with is called NGC-5195. M51 sits at 23 million light years away from Earth.

Thanks John!

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Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com