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.

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 […] ...

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 ...

Herschel opened its ‘eyes’ on 14 June and the Photoconductor Array Camera and Spectrometer obtained images of M51, ‘the whirlpool galaxy’ for a first test observation. Scientists obtained images in ...

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 ...

“Newbie” astrophotographer Kurt Skaar captured this amazing image of Messier 51, the Whirlpool Galaxy, using a three-hour exposure on a Celestron CPC 11 telescope and a Canon EOS 40Da camera. Its core ...

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) ...