65 years of star movement around M51 Whirlpool Galaxy

[Menno555]

I am busy with capturing M51 the Whirlpool Galaxy and gathered enough broadband data to make this video.
I downloaded POSS1 captures (red and blue filter) from https://archive.stsci.edu/cgi-bin/dss_form and blended those together in Photoshop. Also some retouching because there were a lot of plate aberrations (incl a nice hair ).

I overlayed my own M51 capture on top of that, made it fit, saved both images and made a video with that in Cyberlink Power Director.

The POSS data is captured in 1956 by the Mount Palomar 48" Schmidt telescope in the USA. My capture is captured now in 2021 with my 8" Meade LX200 ACF telescope in the Netherlands.

There is a lot of movement visible, some small and big movement. There are also some stars showing in the POSS1 data and not in mine. These are either aberrations I failed to notice are stars that are visible due to the filters they used.

Best watched in 1440p full screen.

https://youtu.be/AYbH-yk3nes

Here a small animated GIF preview.

M51-moving-stars.gif (496.42 KiB) Viewed 2390 times

[admin]

Hi Menno,

that's really cool - very impressive!

Would it be OK for me to share that on the SharpCap facebook page?

cheers,

Robin

[Menno555]

Thanks Robin!
And sure, be my guest

Menno

[timh]

Very nice Menno and a creative idea. ...the near Universe in motion. You might to get to spot a supernova of course too with these blink overlays - so maybe an interesting thing to do with all of our galaxy images -you never know?
Tim

[Menno555]

Thanks Tim!
Yes, I've done it a few times now and it's really interesting. And sometimes with very surprising results.
I did the same thing with a capture of M1 Crab Nebula last year with a capture from 1951. This with the same goal to check proper movement of stars.
What I didn't know was that M1 is expanding very fast. Imagine my surprise and excitement when I did see the first results when overlaying the captures. This was the results: https://youtu.be/YrjVC-O5wOo

Menno

[VPR]

Very well done Menno. I love your innovativeness ….. in many aspects of this hobby. In this case, it is more than just an image.

V.P

[Menno555]

Thanks V.P
What you call innovativeness (new English word learned now ) feels for me like tinkering. It's just fun to do

Menno

[timh]

Thanks Tim!
Yes, I've done it a few times now and it's really interesting. And sometimes with very surprising results.
I did the same thing with a capture of M1 Crab Nebula last year with a capture from 1951. This with the same goal to check proper movement of stars.
What I didn't know was that M1 is expanding very fast. Imagine my surprise and excitement when I did see the first results when overlaying the captures. This was the results: https://youtu.be/YrjVC-O5wOo

Menno

That is an amazing picture - that really brings home the drama of a supernova ember that for us is in such slow motion. All sorts of possibilities maybe - movement of the Pleiades through dust clouds - the East and Western veil etc

TimH

[Menno555]

Thanks Tim
M1 is really around the corner at just 6500 lightyears and is a young nova remanence from a nova that took place less then 1000 years ago (as witnessed from Earth ). The combination of being close and the relative still fast going expansion makes it a great object for this kind of comparison.
The Veil nebulae are a bit harder I think. Although closer at 2400 lightyears, they are a remanence of a nova that took place between 10.000 and 20.000 years ago. So the real speed is harder to capture I think.
The Pleiades .. interesting maybe. They are very close at around 445 lightyears and are moving through that dust cloud (probably both moving). That would be my bet to comparison

Btw the best/most beautiful example of movement, I think is still V838 Monocerotis. They though it to be a nova at first but it turned out to be an outburst of gasses. This video is made out of Hubble captures from 2002 to 2006, so only 4 years. It's edited (not by me ) to make a smooth video: https://youtu.be/93L0IEbUJsk