SpaceSphere

Whirlpool Galaxy

Galaxy

A spiral seen face on, with a smaller galaxy caught at the outer tip of one of its arms.

Can you see it tonight?

Where are you?

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Without it, everything else on this page still holds: what this object is, where it sits on the sky, and where every fact came from.

What it looks like

A photograph of the patch of sky containing Whirlpool Galaxy, taken by a telescope on the ground.

A photograph of this patch of sky, taken by a telescope on the ground. Whirlpool Galaxy sits in the middle, with the surrounding sky around it.

Brightness adjusted so faint detail shows. Every picture here is a rendering of the survey's measurements rather than a measurement itself, and this is the same setting for all of them.

Position
202.46963, 47.19517Source: NASA Extragalactic Database
Brightness
about 8.36Source: SIMBAD Astronomical Database
Apparent size
about 13.71 x 11.67 arcminutesSource: HyperLeda
Shape
SABb
Constellation
Canes VenaticiSource: OpenNGC

Catalogue designations

NGC5194, M51, 2MASX J13295269+4711429, IRAS 13277+4727, MCG +08-25-012, PGC 047404, UGC 08493

Source: OpenNGC