Canes Venatici is a small northern constellation, typically depicted as the hunting dogs of Boötes, who is a herdsman. Cor Caroli is the constellation's brightest star, while the Whirlpool Galaxy is a spiral galaxy tilted face-on to observers on Earth. It has 5 Messier objects, including 4 galaxies. It also contains Ton 618, one of the most massive black holes.
Canes Venatici can be located through the handle of the Big Dipper, with Canes Venatici located in its crook. As you typically see Canes Venatici as a line consisting of two stars, Cor Caroli and Chara, you can form a straight line of three stars with Arcturus in Boötes. Its best visibility is at approximately 9PM in May.
This is a rough drawing of Canes Venatici, with its neighbouring constellations.
Cor Corali forms the asterism, along with Arcturus in Boötes, Denebola in Leo and Spica in Virgo. The other three stars also form another asterism, the Spring Triangle. Cor Corali itself is a binary star. The Whirlpool Galaxy, also known as M51, is an interacting grand-design spiral galaxy with an active galactic nucleus found within Canes Venatici. The grand-design spiral galaxies have prominent and well-defined spiral arms. The interacting component indicates that the gravitational fields of Whirlpool Galaxy and its satellite M51B are disturbing each other. The active galactic nucleus indicates that it has higher-than-normal luminosity over some portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, where the luminosity of the galaxy is not produced by stars. This is theorized to have resulted from the accretion of matter by a supermassive black hole at the center of its host galaxy.
Up next is Canis Major.