M51 - The Whirlpool Galaxy & NGC 5195 companion

This was always on the back of my list when it comes to galaxies, mostly due to the fact that there are so many beautiful photographs of these two galaxies. So I only captured half an hour of exposure with this one.

At at distance of 31 million light-years away from us this seems to be the most famous interacting galaxies couple, mostly due to it's brightness, size, distance and the front on beautiful appearance. Ironically it was never clear if the two were actually interacting.

We know now that NGC 5195, the small, yellowish galaxy at the outermost tip of one of the Whirlpool's arms is actually just passing behind the Whirlpool and it was gliding past it for hundreds of millions of years.