I've now added colour to this image, as well as blending some hydrogen-alpha data into the red channel. 4 hours of 10 minute Luminance exposures. 2 hours of 20 minute Hydrogen-alpha 6 x 5 minutes exposures for each RGB channel. Total 7.5 hours exposure. H-a data blended into both Red and luminance channels. Altair Astro 115mm Triplet. Atik 428 mono camera. Baader LRGB and H-a filters. Photoline 0.79 reducer. All mounted on a Skywatcher EQ8 and controlled with Sequence Generator Pro.

The Whirlpool Galaxy is an interacting grand-design spiral galaxy with a Seyfert 2 active galactic nucleus in the constellation Canes Venatici. It was the first galaxy to be classified as a spiral galaxy. Recently it was estimated to be 23 ± 4 million light-years from the Milky Way, but different methods yield distances between 15 and 35 million ly. Messier 51 is one of the best known galaxies in the sky. 2 hours of 10 minute sub-exposures with 30 x 1 minute sub-exposures blended into the core.

This image has a total of 8 hours exposure time in it (and it needs a LOT more!) NGC 3718 is a gravitationally distorted galaxy lying about 53 million light years outside the Milky Way. It is being distorted by the gravity from galaxy NGC 3729 To the right of the larger galaxy is a faint clustering of very distant galaxies called the Hickson 56 group. I've also identified some very faint galaxies in the original image. The furthest is 1.144 billion light years from us!

I can't leave this image alone and I keep trying to add more data to it whenever I can.

SN 2014J is a type-Ia supernova in Messier 82 (the 'Cigar Galaxy', M82) discovered in mid-January 2014.[3] It is the closest type-Ia supernova discovered in the past 42 years. It was discovered accidentally during an undergraduate teaching session at University of London Observatory.

Inverted B+W image

Also known as the Whirlpool Galaxy, M51 is one of the most famous galaxies. Discovered in 1773 by Charles Messier, the Whirlpool Galaxy and its companion NGC 5195 are the result of the smaller galaxy passing through the core of M51 about 600 million years ago. This represents data collected over the past 12 months. There's about 6.5 hours exposure in here,taken over 4 nights with subs varying from 200 to 360 seconds. Stacked in Nebulosity3 and post processed in Photoshop.

Andromeda is the nearest major galaxy to our own Milky Way Galaxy. Together these two galaxies dominate the Local Group of galaxies. The diffuse light from Andromeda is caused by the hundreds of billions of stars that compose it. The several distinct stars that surround Andromeda's image are actually stars in our Galaxy that are well in front of the background object. Andromeda is frequently referred to as M31 since it is the 31st object on Messier's list of diffuse sky objects.

The galaxy on the left is known as Bode's nebula, named for Johann Bode who found it on near years eve 1774. Of course, it's not really a nebula but a grand design spiral galaxy. It's neighbour, M82, is an irregular galaxy suffering from a strong tidal gravitational interaction with its neighbour.

3.5 hours total exposure 20 x 400 second lights 20 x 100 second R, G, B, binned 2x2 Atik 428EX, Baader LRGB filter. Equinox 80, TRF-2008, EQ6 Mount. Guiding by PHD and finderguider

Located 25 million light years from us, the Pinwheel galaxy is a large spiral galaxy. 170,000 light years across, this galaxy is about twice as large as the Milky Way. You can just about make out one of M101's companion galaxies- NGC5474 to the lower right.

On June 2nd 2011, French astronomers spotted what appeared to be a supernova (exploding star) in the Whirlpool Galaxy. This was confirmed as Type II supernova. A supernova is when a star collapses and explodes, and can briefly outshine a whole galaxy, as the star core blows off most of the stars mass. Without supernova, there would be no life in the Universe. As the star collapses, it creates heavier elements as it tries to resist the force of gravity, elements such as carbon, iron, etc.