4/9/05 M51 Interacting Galaxy in Canes Venatici

Few objects outside the solar system show the effects of gravity more clearly than M51 as it rips apart it's neighbor NGC 5195. I've shot this pair several times, this is definitely my best so far. As usual, I could have used a bit more LUM, during processing I had to back off on some of the sharpening due to signal/noise limitations of my data.