M63 — Sunflower Galaxy
Galaxy in Canes Venatici
About
The Sunflower Galaxy, a flocculent spiral in Canes Venatici about 29 million light-years away. Its arms are patchy in visible light rather than continuous. It belongs to the M51 Group and has a weakly active nucleus.
Imaging tips
- About 13′ by 8′: 1,860–3,110 mm on APS-C spans a third to half of the frame.
- Faint outskirts at 22.3 mag/arcsec². A 5-hour colour-camera image resolves the disk; 25 hours of LRGB, taken in a backyard and at a dark site, also showed the halo and stream.
- Stars blow out easily while the faint dust is being lifted, and that was the 25-hour imager's main struggle. The stream itself is a thin arc of stars well outside the disk.
- It rides high from northern latitudes. Best in March and April.
Facts
- Size
- 13′ × 8′
- Magnitude
- 8.6
- Coordinates
- RA 13h 15.8m, Dec +42° 2′
- Framing, APS-C
- 1860–3110 mm
- Framing, full frame
- 2860–4760 mm
- Best months
- Mar, Apr
- Peak altitude
- 82° from 50°N, 83° from 35°N