The Whirlpool Galaxy is a stunning face-on spiral galaxy located in the constellation Canes Venatici. It is located about 31 million light-years from earth and can be relatively easily found as it is very near the end of the handle of the big dipper.

This image was made with a Nikon Z7 II and a Nikon 600mm f/6.3 PF lens at f/6.3. A total of 102 40 second exposures at ISO 3200 were made for a total of 1hr 8min of exposure time. Star tracking was with a Fornax Lightrack II. Star alignment and stacking was done using Deep Sky Stacker. The stacked-averaged image was then stretched using astro-color-stretch . Some minor final image processing and noise reduction was done in Capture One and Topaz DeNoise AI.