Symposium - International Astronomical Union, (209), p. 633-634, 2003
DOI: 10.1017/s007418090020990x
The galaxy pair NGC 5194/95 (M51) is one of the closest and best known interacting systems. Despite its notoriety, however, many of its features are not well studied. Extending westward from NGC 5195 is a low surface brightness tidal tail, which can only be seen in deep broadband exposures. Our previous [O III] λ5007 planetary nebulae (PN) survey of M51 recovered this tidal tail, and presented us with a opportunity to study the kinematics of a galaxy interaction in progress. We report the results of a spectroscopy survey of the PN, aimed at determining their kinematic properties. We then use these data to constrain new self-consistent numerical models of the system.