M51, the Whirlpool Galaxy

Filed under pretty pictures, amateur image processing, Deep Impact, stars and galaxies

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On July 14, 2011, Deep Impact turned its Medium Resolution Imager toward M51, the Whirlpool Galaxy, and took 65 photos. This image is composed of six clear-filter exposures, stacked to reduce the noise from cosmic ray hits.

NASA / JPL / UMD / processed by Emily Lakdawalla

Copyright holder: Emily Lakdawalla

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Contact us to request publication permission from the copyright holder. Original image data dated on or about July 14, 2011