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M51 - Whirlpool Galaxy
M51, The Whirlpool Galaxy is a dance of two galaxies dancing together, the smaller of the two being NGC 5195. It is ~25-30 million light years away - the light in this photo left M51 when apes were just barely evolving on an earth where continents were colliding to form the planet as we know it today. I had intended to capture print worthy data, but in the domain of astrophotography, it is ripe with pitfalls, any of which can eat away at your image, or even render it useless. This is about 2.5 hours out of 12 hours of imaging, and with some heavy processing to get a veiwable image (in short, I had a enigmatic noise source (hopefully fixed now). But, the beauty of these two intertwined heavenly bodies is undeniable. You can also faintly see the galaxy IC4263 in the upper right corner (also why I didn't crop M51 into the center) - the light from that galaxy left it's home, destinated for me little telescope, ~144 million years ago....when the dinosaurs still romed the earth. That is just stunning to me. Taken from Bortle 8.7 location.