by Rod Pommier
Location: Pommier Observatory, Portland, OR, USA. Telescope/mount: Celestron Compustar C14 with 0.75x focal reducer (f/8). Camera: SBIG STL 11000M at -25C. Filters: Baader Planetarium LRGB. Date: May 8-9, 2011. Exposures: LRGB=184:70:70:70 minutes=7hours:04minutes total exposure. Guiding: Self-guided. Software: MaxIm DL, Photoshop.
This is an enlarged view of M51, the Whirlpool galaxy, cropped from my larger image posted earlier. I was able to resolve some dust lane detail down to the vicinity of the galactic core. Again, the face-on blue spiral galaxy IC 4278 is visible above the bridge and the yellow edge-on spiral galaxy IC 4277 is visible above the large diffuse "E" formed by the tidal spray of stars from NGC 5195. Numerous other faint background galaxies are visible, although not as many as in the full frame image.