M94 is a starburst galaxy in Canes Venatici about 15 million light-years distant. Its core had a major starburst about 10 million years ago which turned the center into a flocculent spiral. Outside of that is a disk region of older stars with hints of a few new stars in thin lines. Unfortunately, my color data was weak due to fog, especially in blue so I didn't pick this up well. Coming off this is a faint somewhat blue (too blue in my image due to underexposure and my attempt to correct for the fog) spiral that looks rather ring-like but really is a spiral that unfortunately I cut off at the south end. The arm continues south out of the image for a bit. It also goes north but I didn't pick that up due to underexposure. This was taken back when I was first going digital and my technique was poor. I do need to revisit this one with a lot more time on a night of better transparency.

While the galaxy appears rather large the part of the outer region I picked up is about 60,000 light-years in diameter. Long exposures show it to be about 80,000 light-years. It is classified at NED as (R)SA(r)ab; Sy2 LINER. It was discovered by Pierre Méchain on March 22, 1781. Messier observed and recorded it 2 days later on March 24.

You can read more on this one at: http://messier.seds.org/m/m094.html

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME