This is M51, the Whirlpool Galaxy, and its companion galaxy, NGC 5194. Charles Messier discovered the large spiral galaxy on October 13, 1773, and described it as a “very faint […] ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. On Oct. 13, 1773, a French astronomer named Charles Messier discovered the "whirlpool galaxy," also known as Messier 51, or M51.

The sweeping tentacles of Messier-51, a galaxy about 27 million light-years away in space, have been a popular target for astronomers for years. Lying within the boundaries of the Hunting Dogs ...

Vermont-based astrophotographer Michele Hernandez Bayliss has captured stunning views of Messier 94 - also known as the Croc's Eye galaxy - and the famous Whirlpool galaxy (M 51), both of which are ...

Messier 51 (M51) is perhaps better known by its nickname of the Whirlpool Galaxy because its face-on orientation to Earth reveals its wound-up spiral arms. This gives telescopes here a view of another ...

The search for expolanets — those orbiting stars beyond our sun — is taking place outside of the Milky Way as we speak, and astronomers using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have observed indicators ...

Data sonification translates information collected by various NASA missions — such as the Chandra X-ray Observatory, Hubble Space Telescope, and Spitzer Space Telescope — into sounds. Messier 51 (M51) ...