Here Comes the Sunflower
The Sunflower Galaxy (M63) is a large, but very distant galaxy in the constellation Canes Venatici. At a distance of about 27 million light-years, it is amazing that we can see this much detail. In fact, I rarely photograph galaxies because most of them are so small that it requires excellent conditions (very dark skies and low turbulence) to get a decent image. I shot this at last week’s star party, using the William Optics FLT-132. This is actually cropped quite a bit and includes less than half of the full frame. You can see another galaxy in the upper […]