M101, The Pinwheel Galaxy (Richard Francis)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Ursa Major (UMa) · Contains: M 101 · NGC 5447 · NGC 5449 · NGC 5450 · NGC 5451 · NGC 5453 · NGC 5455 · NGC 5457 · NGC 5461 · NGC 5462 · NGC 5471 · Pinwheel galaxy

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M101, The Pinwheel Galaxy

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M101, The Pinwheel Galaxy

M101 is a spiral galaxy, face-on to us. It was discovered by Pierre Mèchain in 1781. He informed Charles Messier, who included it in his catalogue. It’s a large galaxy with about 10 times the number of stars as our own, and it also has a larger diameter: about 170,000 light-years compared to the 100,000 light years for our Milky-Way Galaxy. It is 21 million light-years away.

M101 has a notably asymmetrical appearance, which is the result of tidal forces with a number of nearby companion galaxies. It also has a large number of bright star-forming regions, showing up red from the light of hydrogen ionised by the bright and hot, young stars.

This image was made over 3 evenings in mid-May 2018. Unfortunately I had to reject many of the sub-exposures as they were blurred: I had unwisely disabled temperature compensation of the focuser. Consequently this image needs more data (which can be seen from the noise level) but the weather recently has not cooperated.

Filters:

Red: 4x 300 sec + 4x 600sec

Green: 4x 300 sec + 3x 600 sec

Blue: 4x 300 sec + 3x 600 sec

Luminance: 4x 300 sec + 2x 600 sec

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The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

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Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	2078607
PixInsight job	R3ROEL34PK1YMAV4TBLH770PTLHWW8WK
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

RA (center)	14h03m12s.286
RA (top/left)	14h01m50s.237
RA (top/right)	14h01m52s.434
RA (bottom/right)	14h04m33s.345
RA (bottom/left)	14h04m33s.106

Dec (center)	+54°20′58″.12
Dec (top/left)	+54°36′33″.24
Dec (top/right)	+54°05′11″.60
Dec (bottom/right)	+54°05′20″.15
Dec (bottom/left)	+54°36′41″.30

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M101, The Pinwheel Galaxy

M101, The Pinwheel Galaxy

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