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 Pinwheel Galaxy, Edward Overstreet
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M101 Pinwheel Galaxy, Edward Overstreet
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Description

Messier 101 is a very large, relatively nearby, face-on spiral galaxy in the constellation Ursa Major. It is also known as the Pinwheel Galaxy. The distance to M 101 has been determined to be about 27 million light years, by the observation of Cepheid variables with the Hubble Space Telescope. At this distance, M 101 has a linear diameter of over 170,000 light years - nearly twice the size of the Milky Way - and is thus among the largest spiral galaxies. M 101 has an absolute magnitude of -21.5, or a luminosity of about 33 billion suns. Its disk contains on the order of 100 billion solar masses.  *SkySafari Pro

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M101 Pinwheel Galaxy, Edward Overstreet