Messier 51

Messier 51 is one of the most beautiful celestial sights, both through a telescope and on camera.  On a dark night, you can make tremendous detail.  This photo was shot with a 1st quarter moon which tends to wash out a lot of detail, but still not a bad first attempt.  You can see what astronomers call the prototype for interacting galaxies.  Though the picture is static, you can almost perceive these galaxies whirling through the cosmos.  The larger of the two galaxies is just a bit smaller than our own Milky Way, but only contains 10% of our total mass.  

Photo Details
Messier 51
June 14, 2013 (first star party night)
Orion 8" Astrograph on VX Mount
30 sub frames at 30"/frame
Total Exposure Time = 15 minutes
Image stacking in Deep Sky Tracker
Image processing in Fitswork
This image suffered from a fair degree of imprecise tracking.  Better polar alignment should improve future images.