M51 - Whirlpool Galaxy
2014-02-25 
This night it was really windy so managing to photograph thru the 12" LX200 was almost impossible as any wind would make the images blurry. Out of a few hours integration time only around 20 minutes worth of data was usable. Even with that fact, the whirlpool galaxy turned out great. The last try was over three hours worth of data but with a smaller telescope, so the image scale was a lot better with this one.
See more information here for the night this picture was taken. 
A galaxy is a massive, gravitationally bound system consisting of stars, stellar remnants, an interstellar medium of gas and dust, and dark matter. Examples of galaxies range from dwarfs with as few as ten million stars to giants with one hundred trillion stars, each orbiting their galaxy's own center of mass. ― source and more information wikipedia
Date: 2014-02-25 / 22:39:00 UTC
Location: Ekerö, Sweden
Temperature: 2 °C
Telescope: Meade LX200GPS 12" SCT
Camera: Nikon D5100
ISO: 800
Mount: Meade fork-mount
Exposure time: 53 X 20 sec
Reducer/flattener: F/6.3 reducer
Other info: Autoguided with Lotus RT480 scope and QHY5L-II. Used PHD2 (2.2.1) guiding software.
Processing: Stacked and darks-subtracted in DeepSkyStacker. Processed in Photoshop CS6.