<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div dir="ltr">\ufeff<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div dir="ltr">\ufeff<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">Hey Mike:<div><br></div><div>Thanks for ID-ing the fuzzies on those wonderful images of M51. I saw them too and wondered about their identification. I looked briefly at some stock online images of M51 to see what I could learn. Nothing immediately jumped out. </div><div><br></div><div>Interestingly, even the brightest ones were not identified on the Stellarium App on my handheld telephonic device. </div><div><br></div><div>A.W. </div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><div dir="ltr">Sent from my iPhone</div><div dir="ltr"><br><blockquote type="cite">On Apr 6, 2025, at 12:12\u202fPM, Mike McCabe <cartech2000@yahoo.com> wrote:<br><br></blockquote></div><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr">\ufeff<div class="yahoo-style-wrap" style="font-family:Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size:16px;"><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">...which stands for <b>W</b>eymouth <b>L</b>anding<b> D</b>ark <b>S</b>ky<b> P</b>reserve.</div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">Of course I joke about that, but Matt and Jim have to make the best of their situations, which they consistently do. Matt recently shared his latest rendition of M51, the Whirlpool galaxy in Canes Venatici. While Matt himself indicated that he wasn't especially impressed with the result, I believe that when everything is taken into consideration it really came out remarkable. </div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">It wasn't all that long ago that astrophotographers working from even dark sky locations struggled to get the apparent 'bridge' between M51 and NGC 5195, which by the way is an optical illusion. What we're really seeing there is the distorted arm of M51 overlaid on NGC 5195, which lies well behind the bigger galaxy. It is thought that a long-ago gravitation interaction between the two celestial bodies 'stretched' the arm of M51 in the way that we see it now, but that they are not currently physically connected.</div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">But get the bridge Matt did, and a whole host of other details as well. In taking a close look at his image, there are at least a half-dozen galaxies in there, with two 'extras' being quite prominent even at nearly 16th magnitude.</div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><div><1743955499437blob.jpg></div><br><span></span><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">While the main protagonists of course are the Whirlpool itself and its interacting dwarf neighbor, IC's 4277 and 4278 are easily discerned - even at distances of many hundreds of light years away!</div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">The distance to IC 4278 is well known at ~230 million light years, but 4277 is less well studied. With some web-sleuthing I was able to come across one calculation that estimated it to be nearly 600 million light years distant. That's some OLD light collecting on that there camera sensor! </div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">File Under: <i>What Bored Astronomers Do When It's Forever Cloudy</i></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">Mike M.</div></div><div><1743955499437blob.jpg></div></div></blockquote></div></div></div></body></html>