Date: July 3, 2009
Location: Victoria Centre Observatory, Observatory Hill, Victoria, BC, Canada

It is easy to see how the Sunflower Galaxy was named. This unbarred spiral galaxy in Canes Venatici includes many short spiral arms containing star forming regions. These arms appear blue in more detailed photos of this object, and also a distinct yellow core would be visible. My photo captured little colour...probably because the sky was awash with a 12 day old Moon.

Equipment: Canon 50D mounted prime focus on a 14" Meade LX200 SCT operating at f/10 mounted on a Paramount ME autoguided with an Orion autoguider using PHD.

30 x 3 minute exposures at ISO 1600
18°C, LVM 3.5, Transparency 4/5, Steadiness 4/5, Humidity 22%, clear skies

Processing:
ImagesPlus 3.75 - Auto-process - digital development from raw, dark frame calibration, normalize, grading, alignment, average min/max exclude combine. Contrast stretch using DD BP-2180.
NeatImage 6.0 Pro: default noise reduction
ACDSee Pro 2.5: agressive unsharp mask, resize, reduce colour depth to 24 bit, save as jpg.