M101, The Pinwheel Galaxy (Tim Stone)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Ursa Major (UMa) · Contains: M 101 · NGC 5457 · NGC 5477

M101, The Pinwheel Galaxy

If we could see this galaxy with our naked eye, it would be about half the size of the full moon in the sky, hovering above the end of the handle of the Big Dipper. It is a spectacular example of a grand design spiral, and having recently interacted with NGC 5477, its long spiral arms are festooned with enormous starbirth regions. The brightest of them are so bright they have their own NGC numbers.

M101 makes a beautiful image, provided the photographer can overcome the low surface brightness. To achieve reasonably low noise, I had to acquire almost 40 luminosity subs at 600 seconds a piece. I could have used longer exposures, but its position places it in moderately light polluted sky for me.

In addition to NGC 5477, the region sports a large number of background galaxies. These faint smudges are some of my favorite features of images like this one. Their light traveled for a half billion or more years to reach my camera. It makes me happy that I captured a few of those photons.

Image acquired at Sugar Grove Observatory, a facility of Twin City Amateur Astronomers (tcaa.us).

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Distribution of astrophotographers

This table shows the number of distinct astrophotographers who have been assigned and IOTD/TP award compared to the total number of images awarded.
	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

Distribution of subject types

This table shows the distribution of awards per subject type, compared to the popularity of images of that subject type.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
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Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

Distribution of data sources

This table shows the distribution of awards per data source, compared to the popularity of images acquired from that data source.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

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.

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
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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Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

Status	Basic success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	333009
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

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M101, The Pinwheel Galaxy

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