Finally the spring season in 2023 rewarded the astronomers in Austria for all the bad weather we had in winter. Around the new moon in April, which ended the Ramadan month, I took a week off to be able to spend a night in the field. The daylight saving time would keep me another hour more from falling into my bed, so it was good to know I could sleep long. This night had still 6 hours of darkness and apart from a few short gusts the air was extremely steady. Finally I captured almost 5 hours of net exposure of the famous galaxy Messier 63.

M 63 is also called the "sunflower galaxy" because of all the rippled structure originating from vivid star formation. This is the aftermath of a hypothesized merger with a dwarf galaxy, which also causes the irregular structure to the right, just below the second bright foreground star. An extended, extremely faint arc to the left is not visible, not even in the contrast enhanced, inverted image.

References about the distance of Messier 63 vary, but the most likely estimates are around 30 million light years. Whoever calls this distance far away should mind the numerous faint and tiny smudges in the left half of the frame. The light from galaxy cluster Zwicky 5836 travelled more than 2 billion years until it arrived on my camera chip in this remarkable night.

As usual, clicking on the picture will give you optimal screen presentation. If you don't mind the extra noise in the high resolution version, you may explore the structures in even more detail.