It contains a bright knot, IC 349, about half an arcminute wide near Merope.
It harbors a supermassive black hole at its core and has massive regions of star formation in the bright blue knots in the spiral arms.
This view shows large, wispy filamentary structures, smaller bright knots of gas, and patches of diffuse gas.
The embedded bright knots are dense gas clumps in the ring.
The unique galaxy, which is situated 3.2 billion light-years from the Earth, has an extended stream of bright blue knots and diffuse wisps of young stars.
Its central region is marked by a pattern of dark and bright cusped knots and their associated dark tails (see picture).
In pictures of M51 these show up as the bright blue 'knots' throughout the spiral arms.
This is evident in the bright blue knots of star formation that are strung along the arms of the galaxy on the right and along the small galaxy on the left.
The lights twisted into a hard bright knot, receded to a tiny white spot.
In one bright dusty knot, the Hubble picture reveals four fragments close together in celestial terms, two of the pieces being separated by only 700 miles.
