✺ Whirlpool Galaxy Whirlpool Galaxy is a galaxy in Canes Venatici. ......... .............. ................. ..::....:::::..... ..::...:+++++:::.... ..:::.:+*+::::::::... ..:::::+*+***+:::::... ..:::::+**#**+:::::.. ...:::::+***+*+:::::.. ...::::::::+*+:.:::.. ....:::+++++:...::.. .....:::::....::.. ................. .............. ......... Type Galaxy Constellation Canes Venatici Magnitude 10.0 Apparent size 11′ × 7′ You need a small telescope Known as Messier M51 Dreyer NGC 5194 Physical Distance 31 million light years More information about Whirlpool Galaxy Lord Rosse drew the Whirlpool's spiral arms in 1845, having seen it through the largest telescope in the world, a six-foot mirror at Birr Castle. He had sketched the Crab Nebula the year before. Nobody knew what he was looking at: another eighty years passed before spirals were shown to be galaxies of their own rather than clouds inside our own. The small companion on the end of an arm, NGC 5195, is not parked there but passing behind, and its pull is what draws the arms so sharply. History Discovered 1773, Charles Messier First drawn 1845, Lord Rosse, the first spiral anyone recorded First photographed 1889, Isaac Roberts, which showed the spiral was real Messier was hunting comets. He compiled his list between 1758 and 1781 as a register of things that look like comets but are not. That's why the objects on it have nothing in common beyond being fuzzy and staying put. Dreyer compiled the New General Catalogue in 1888, mostly from the sweeps William and John Herschel made of the sky, and numbered its 7,840 objects in order of right ascension. where it is tonight: skymap.sh/Whirlpool Galaxy