Whirlpool Galaxy (M51)

A graceful spiral caught in the act of grabbing a smaller galaxy.

Also called: M51.

🕒 When can I see it?🚀 Travel there

Whirlpool Galaxy (M51) — Drawn, not photographed.

What it is

Galaxy with some of the sky's clearest spiral arms, first galaxy ever seen with a spiral shape (1845).

Spiral galaxy: A flat disc of stars wound into arms. Ours is one. Every kind of thing there is →

How to find the Whirlpool Galaxy

Look in the constellation Canes Venatici.

It is best placed in the spring if you are north of the equator.

Low or unreachable from most of the Southern Hemisphere.

Star-hop: Both galaxies show as two glowing blobs in a 6-inch scope; the arms need 8 inches and a dark night.

Finding it: Near the end of the Big Dipper's handle.

The Planetarium works out where it actually is from your own place and the date — including whether it is above the horizon at all tonight.

Show me the Whirlpool Galaxy in tonight's sky

What you will really see

Through a small telescope, on a good night

A faint fuzzy oval of soft light — the bright core shows; the arms only hint at themselves.

Honest, not glamorous — why the pictures here are drawn.

🔭 See it drawn as it looks through a telescope

Worth knowing about the Whirlpool Galaxy

On that same scale, the Whirlpool Galaxy would be about 23 kilometers away. Light takes 23.0 million years to get here from the Whirlpool Galaxy, so what you are looking at is the Whirlpool Galaxy as it was 23.0 million years ago.

What it is made of: A spiral galaxy with some of the clearest, most photogenic arms in the sky.
What makes it worth knowing: Companion galaxy NGC 5195 is connected by a faint bridge, mid-collision, thought to be winding the arms up tightly.
Its name and its story: In 1845, Lord Rosse's giant telescope (the 'Leviathan of Parsonstown') was the first to see a spiral shape in a 'nebula' -- decades before anyone knew these were separate galaxies, a mystery not settled until Hubble measured Cepheids in Andromeda in the 1920s.

The numbers