These two galaxies are believed to have “collided” about 100 million years ago. It’s one of the brightest galactic groups visible from here and was cataloged by Charles Messier from his observatory in Paris on October 13, 1773. The smaller companion galaxy was discovered in 1781 by Pierre Mechain and is recorded today as NGC 5194. Wikipedia
This was captured from my very heavily light polluted back yard north of Dallas, TX on March 31 and April 1, 2021 with my 8″ Celestron EdgeHD and QHY 168C camera. I had the software select the best 110 of 120 images to integrate and did a few tweaks in GIMP to get the image seen here. A very surprising result for me given the light pollution we have.
