{"id":165314,"url":"https://www.kudos365.com/news/165314-m51-the-whirlpool-galaxy-09-02-22","short_url":"https://www.kudos365.com/news/165314","headline":"M51: The Whirlpool Galaxy • 09/02/22","content":"\u003cp\u003eNASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:\u003c/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eFind the Big Dipper and follow the handle away from the dipper's bowl until you get to the last bright star. Then, just slide your telescope a little south and west and you'll come upon this stunning pair of interacting galaxies, the 51st entry in Charles Messier's famous catalog. Perhaps the original spiral nebula, the large galaxy with well defined spiral structure is also cataloged as NGC 5194. Its spiral arms and dust lanes clearly sweep in front of its companion galaxy (left), NGC 5195. The pair are about 31 million light-years distant and officially lie within the angular boundaries of the small constellation Canes Venatici. In direct telescopic views, M51 looks faint and fuzzy to the eye. But this remarkably deep image shows off details of the interacting galaxy's striking colors and galactic tidal debris. The image includes nearly 90 hours of narrowband data that also reveals a vast glowing cloud of reddish ionized hydrogen gas discovered in the M51 system.\u003c/p\u003e\n\n\n\n\u003cp\u003ePhoto by Fabian Neyer\u003c/p\u003e","content_plain":"NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:\n\nFind the Big Dipper and follow the handle away from the dipper's bowl until you get to the last bright star. Then, just slide your telescope a little south and west and you'll come upon this stunning pair of interacting galaxies, the 51st entry in Charles Messier's famous catalog. Perhaps the original spiral nebula, the large galaxy with well defined spiral structure is also cataloged as NGC 5194. Its spiral arms and dust lanes clearly sweep in front of its companion galaxy (left), NGC 5195. The pair are about 31 million light-years distant and officially lie within the angular boundaries of the small constellation Canes Venatici. In direct telescopic views, M51 looks faint and fuzzy to the eye. But this remarkably deep image shows off details of the interacting galaxy's striking colors and galactic tidal debris. The image includes nearly 90 hours of narrowband data that also reveals a vast glowing cloud of reddish ionized hydrogen gas discovered in the M51 system.\n\n\n\nPhoto by Fabian Neyer","published_at":"2022-09-02T12:16:04-07:00","updated_at":"2026-07-07T18:04:22-07:00","author":{"type":"Person","name":"Specola-","url":"https://www.kudos365.com/profiles/298285-specola"},"description":"Stay up-to-date with Specola on Kudos365. View their photo published Sep/02/2022 on Science and Technology. Browse your favorite topics and share your expertise, too.","type":"photo","image":"https://k365pi.imgix.net/84ad452b-3d59-470b-af1e-bcc463f94f4b.jpg?auto=compress,format\u0026fit=max\u0026w=1200\u0026h=1200\u0026q=48","likes_count":4,"comments_count":1,"categories":[{"name":"Science and Technology","url":"https://www.kudos365.com/categories/986-science-and-technology"}],"schema":{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"CreativeWork","url":"https://www.kudos365.com/news/165314-m51-the-whirlpool-galaxy-09-02-22","headline":"M51: The Whirlpool Galaxy • 09/02/22","image":"https://k365pi.imgix.net/84ad452b-3d59-470b-af1e-bcc463f94f4b.jpg?auto=compress,format\u0026fit=max\u0026w=1200\u0026h=1200\u0026q=48","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Specola-","url":"https://www.kudos365.com/profiles/298285-specola"},"datePublished":"2022-09-02T12:16:04-07:00","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":"https://schema.org/LikeAction","userInteractionCount":4}],"subjectOf":[{"@type":"Thing","name":"Science and Technology","url":"https://www.kudos365.com/categories/986-science-and-technology"}]}}