This photo reminds me of a sea shell, I love it~! I’ve got a bunch of new astro photos and have fallen behind with posting them.
Here is info on this one: M51, the ‘Whirlpool Galaxy’ in Canes Venatici is famous for its beautiful spiral structure, The M51 system is a spectacular example of interacting galaxies – in this case NGC 5195 is being “ripped apart” by the huge gravitational disturbance of M51, while M51 has in turn undergone huge structural alteration from the gravitational effects of NGC 5195. The distance of M51 is estimated to be about 37 million light years. The diameter is approximately 100,000 light years. A spiral galaxy very similar to our own Milky Way, seen face-on. There are a couple of hundred billion stars here. If you look closely, you may notice a few faint fuzzy objects in the image. These are not foreground stars in our own galaxy (as the bright non fuzzy objects are) but are even more distant galaxies.
Click on this link to read the Wikipedia description of the Whirlpool Galaxy. Photo by Dave Chaton.
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