M51

[Matt I]

Finally!!!! Bagged M51 tonight. Been trying for months and just couldn't find it. Seeing the detail of the mass at the other end of the spiral arm as well as the centre was just amazing! :-)

[umadog]

Great!

[paul schofield]

Congratulations on bagging M51. Its great finding things for the first time. Cant beat that feeling of satisfaction, along with ticking off another Messier, well done.

[Mr Q]

Matt - Like a lot of DSOs, M51 is a somewhat difficult object to locate due to the lack of nearby bright stars. As your locating skills improve, like yours has in finally locating M51, you will find locating other more challenging objects easier. So good luck in finding others - the night sky has many more objects to observe and with increased locating skills you will be kept busy for the rest of your life

[Astro Imp]

Well done!!!

Gives you a great feeling when it all works out right.

[swamp thing]

Nice one Matt, finding an object after a long search is just the greatest feeling. I had a long cat and mouse game with M1 when I started. It took me many attempts to find that.

[Si W]

Congratulations matt

[Stu]

Great stuff. It's a really tricky one that has quite low surface brightness and easily gets lost in LP.

Much easier once you've seen it once though, like quite a few like this.

Cheers

Stu

[Matt I]

Thanks guys. It was and still is a great feeling. Keep seeing it in my mind! :-)

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Well done. It was one of my first galaxies, and I still return to it often

[nightskystargazer]

Matt,

Good for you in BAGGING M-51, I've been trying for a long time to bagged it, from my heavy light polluted bckyard, I can't even see Megrez (Mag. 3.3) .

CS,KLU,

.

Tom

[Double Kick Drum]

Nice one.

M51 and NGC 5195 are a nice combo.

Happy hunting!

[WaveSoarer]

Yeh! Well done Matt. I had a look last night but the sky was pretty bright so I could only just see the cores of M51 and its neighbour. It certainly needs dark skies to bring out detail.

Dave

[paul schofield]

Well done indeed and congrats, will have to add that to my search list again. Not managed to see it yet, tried many times.

[Ganymede12]

Sounds like a great object to see! I can't wait for my Skyliner 200P dob (and I guarantee it will cloud over when I get it!)

[Mr Q]

Sounds like a great object to see! I can't wait for my Skyliner 200P dob (and I guarantee it will cloud over when I get it!)

It is Ant. The link below has a good finder chart for every Messier object. See chart 5 for M51.

http://www.custerobservatory.org/docs/messier1.pdf