It belongs to the Ursa Major constellation family . Characteristic for this region of the sky is the high amount of galaxies. The companion is a 5 mag star, which can easily be resolved by small telescopes. With a magnitude of about 6 the globular cluster M3 is still among the brightest of its class in the sky. It appears as a hazy patch in binoculars.
Small scopes show a softly glowing lightball.
To resolve individual stars telescopes with an aperture of 100mm and more are needed. It is well worth an observation, but within the lightpollution of cities is may not been seen. Next to M51 lies the companion galaxy, NGC 5195 . Both galaxies are physically related. To separate the two galaxies large telescopes are required.