This image is of the Whirlpool Galaxy, which is also known as M51a or NGC5194. It isn't actually a single galaxy - rather a pair of galaxies that are gravitationally interacting with each other. The companion galaxy (the part to the upper left of the main galaxy) is NGC5195, or M51b. The designation M51 is normally used to describe the pair.

Lots more information about this object can be found on its Wikipedia page.

This target wasn't actually too difficult to capture good data from, although having made another couple of attempts since this one I think I may just have been very fortunate with conditions on this occasion. The part that gave me real difficulty was in the processing - trying to keep good detail in the galaxy whilst controlling the noise in the background sky was very challenging, and getting the colours to match what I had seen from the multitude of images of this target proved to be very difficult too.

It's highly likely that I had unrealistic expectations of what I could achieve with this given my inexperience at the time. What I know now is that trying to image with a very long focal length telescope (>2000mm in this case) multiplies the challenge by at least a couple of orders of magnitude. Everything has to work almost flawlessly to get anything at all. Every minor imperfection in tracking, guiding, focus and alignment is amplified by the fact that it is a very small field of view being captured.

You can view this image in the WorldWideTelescope by clicking here.