The Whirlpool Galaxy (M51) in Canes Venatici ...
"Ever since I was a young amateur I've wanted to see spiral arms. In the telescopes of my youth galactic structure was hard to come by. While I could often distinguish a galaxy's bright core from its faint disk, arms held out on me until I could afford a larger instrument. On Earth we find spirals in sunflowers and snails, but to see it expressed in something as enormous as a galaxy transforms this familiar pattern into something truly grand. That's what I feel when I point my scope at the Whirlpool Galaxy and see its billions of suns arranged in the whorls of a spiral. Grandeur. Not to mention the joy of knowing that a shape imprinted in my very DNA resonates across the universe. ..."
Sky and Telescope
Astronomy: Meet the stars next door
The nearest stars. Two-thirds of our stellar neighbors are cool M-class dwarf stars. ...
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