images

photograph by
upton
image by
sinclair
javier mndez alvarez (isaac newton group),
nik szymanek, and simon tulloch

In this stunning view from the 4.2-meter William Herschel Telescope on the island of La Palma, M51, the
Whirlpool Galaxy, appears to float among the stars of
northeastern Canes Venatici. A flattened disk of stars,
gas, and dust, M51 glows blue as starlight particularly from young, bright O-, B-, and A-type stars is scattered by innumerable dust grains. The Whirlpools companion, NGC 5195 (left), is also a disk galaxy, but it
contains relatively little gas and shines with the yellowish to reddish light of much older stars.
M51s most striking feature its two-armed spiral
structure itself has two parts. M51 was a spiral galaxy before its neighbor swung by several hundred million years ago; a well-preserved remnant spiral persists
in the inner half of its disk. But the long
spiral arms at the very top and bottom of
By Blaise Canzian
this image have a different origin: they
were extruded when NGC 5195 most closely approached
M51, inducing strong tides that pulled on the Whirlpools disk like taffy. The joints between the two kinds
of arms are noticeable as kinks at diametrically opposite points midway out in the disk.
The stuff of which M51 is made all rotates ponderously around the galaxys center. The rotation is counterclockwise as seen from Earth, so the spiral arms are
trailing and resemble water streaming from a spinning
lawn sprinkler. M51s older, inner arms are compression
or density waves that travel through the disk at the expense of the galaxys rotation. The waves move more
slowly than the disk itself, so stars, gas, and dust catch
up with them from the inside and are compressed by
them. This compression collects existing dust and precipitates yet more from previously rarefied material,
forming dark dust lanes on the insides of the spiral
arms. The compression of gas and dust also induces star
formation. The bluest parts of M51s spiral arms blossom
just downstream from the dust lanes, as newborn stars
cast off their dusty cocoons and then light them up.
A unique collaboration between professional and
amateur astronomers resulted in this image, which details M51s dim outer disk and its bright core. (The core
is burned out in most photographs.) Researcher Javier
Mndez Alvarez gathered 5-minute CCD images in
blue, green, and red light. Amateurs Nik Szymanek and
Simon Tulloch then processed the data using the
MaxIm DL software package.
BLAISE CANZIAN is a staff astronomer at the Flagstaff (Arizona)
Station of the U.S. Naval Observatory. His research interests include image processing, spiral structure, and the dynamics of
the Milky Way.

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June 2001 Sky & Telescope

2000 ISAAC NEWTON GROUP

Anatomy of a Whirlpool

2001 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

2001 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

Sky & Telescope June 2001

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