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This is my latest attempt at this difficult to portray object, in which I've emphasized both the outer faint extensions as well as the inner disk details. M51 and its interacting companion NGC5195 form a gravitationally bound system, spanning a huge10x4 arcminutes in size. While M51 with the face on spiral arms is a bright 9th magnitude, the companion galaxy to the right NGC5195 is 10.5 and spans 5 arcminutes. M51 demonstrates plume structure in the the arms, small tangential arcs of nebulosity seen just above the lowermost arms. A plethora of pink HII regions fills the inner edges of the arms of this object, and a few stragglers in the companion.

Processing: Six 10 minutes subframes with no filter and 12 with the Ha filter were dark subtracted and flat fielded, combined and form the L channel. Luminance layering was used to preserve the outer and inner nebulosities at the same time, since DDP alone reduced the contrast too much in the core.

Instrument:  12.5" f/5 Home made Newtonian
Platform:  Astrophysics 1200 QMD
CCD Camera:  SBIG ST8i NABG
Guider: SBIG ST4
Exposure:  L+HaRGB = 120:60:20:20:40 (RGB Binned 2x2)
RGB Combine Ratio:  1: .8: 1.2
Filters:  RGB Tricolor
Location:  Payson, Arizona
Elevation:  5150 ft.
Sky:  Seeing FWHM = 4.5 arcsec (Maxim DL - 10min subframe), Transparency 8/10
Outside Temperature:  20 C
CCD Temperature:  0 C
Processing Tools:  Maxim DL, Photoshop, AIP4WIN, PW Pro

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