The famous Sunflower Galaxy, Messier 63 (or NGC 5055), is a spiral galaxy located about 29 millions light-years away in the northern constellation of Canes Venatici.
The shape or morphology of this galaxy has a classification of SAbc, indicating a spiral form with no central bar (SA) and moderate to loosely wound arms (bc).
As there is a general lack of large-scale continuous spiral structure in visible light, it is considered a flocculent galaxy. However, when observed in the near infrared, a symmetric two-arm structure is seen with each arm wrapping 150° around the galaxy and extending out to 13,000 light-years from the nucleus. The halo feature around M63 is consistent with a giant stellar stream that originated from the accretion of a dwarf satellite sometime within the last 5 billion years. There are quite a lot of galaxies and galaxy clusters in the area and many big HII regions inside M63.