<< Homepage Astronomy
Astronomy: Messier 51 two colliding galaxies
|
The bigger galaxy of these two colliding galaxies is the 51st entry in Charles Messier's famous catalog. Its spiral arms and dust lanes clearly sweep in front of its smaller companion galaxy, NGC 5195 on the right. The pair are about 31 million light years distant and officially lie within the boundaries of the small constellation Canes Venatici. Although, the galaxies seem to collide, actually this is not the case. Merely, the galaxies blur into a hodgepodge of millions of stars, in a process of many thousands of years. Though M51 looks faint and fuzzy in small, earthbound telescopes, this sharpest ever picture of M51 was made in January 2005 with the Advanced Camera for Surveys on board the Hubble Space Telescope. Related subjects>> Collision of Galaxy AM0644-741>> Messier catalog of 110 deep sky objects >> Charles Messier >> Milky Way Galaxy |
 The two colliding galaxies, M51 (left), and NGC 5195 |
<< previous page