Pinwheel Galaxy (Mollenberg Observatory)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Ursa Major (UMa) · Contains: M 101 · NGC 5422 · NGC 5457 · NGC 5461 · NGC 5473 · NGC 5474 · NGC 5485

Powered byPixInsight

Pinwheel Galaxy

Link: https://www.instagram.com/p/COdd97kJEa_/

Powered byPixInsight

Pinwheel Galaxy

Link: https://www.instagram.com/p/COdd97kJEa_/

Tis the season, galaxy season that is ☺️

The Pinwheel Galaxy (AKA Messier 101, M101 or NGC 5457) is a face-on spiral galaxy located 21 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Ursa Major. Discovered in 1781, was one of the final entries in Charles Messier's catalog.

It's a fairly large (28′.8 × 26′.9, comparable to the full moon) and bright target (at mag. 7.86) as seen from Earth, due to the "relative proximity" and diameter of 170,000 ly, which puts it somewhere between the Milky Way (110kly) and Andromeda Galaxy (220 kly) with estimated one trillion stars. There are several other galaxies visible, including NGC 5474, a dwarf galaxy interacting with Pinwheel Galaxy and resulting in the peculiar form (see second image).

Last night was the first (and based on the forecast, the last) good imaging night in a while, with clear skies, cool temps, the moon rising late and no wind (my recent nemesis despite clear skies). I have had major tracking issues with my mount as of late that, resolved (knock on wood) by field stripping and reassembling the mount in frustration one early morning. The final image, in various crops, consists of the best 90 of 115 subframes at 200 seconds for 5 hours of total integration.

Image acquisition with Nina and post processing in APP and Photoshop.

#astrophotography #astronomy #space #spiralgalaxy #galaxy #ngc5457 #ngc5474 #messier101 #m101 #messierobjects #deepsky #dso #galaxies #asi294mcpro #explorescientific #astropixelprocessor #nightskyphotography #starrynight #optolong #celestron #space #longexposure #universetoday #nightimages #maythe4thbewithyou #starwars

Cloudy Nights
Southern Hemisphere Astro

Please note: The following tables are updated every 24 hours.

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
Extremely wide field
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.
Promotions by Submitters When 3 distinct Submitters promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for Top Pick status. This requirement, in addition to anonymization of images and distribution to only a subset of them, prevents biases and ensures that the best images are selected.
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	4475843
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):

Pinwheel Galaxy

Pinwheel Galaxy

Equipment

Acquisition details

Description

Comments

Sky plot

Histogram

In these public groups

		...
You have no new notifications.

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):

Pinwheel Galaxy

Pinwheel Galaxy

Equipment

Acquisition details

Description

Comments

Sky plot

Histogram

In these public groups

Notifications

AstroBin is in READ ONLY mode

Sorry :-(

Sorry :-(

Sorry :-(

Are you really sure?

Warning!

Warning!

Are you sure?

Report abuse

Slideshow settings

IOTD/TP stats (last [x] days)

Distribution of astrophotographers

Distribution of subject types

Distribution of data sources

Sorry

Sorry

Share

Upload new revision

Upload uncompressed source (XISF/FITS/PSD/TIFF)

Delete image and all its revisions?

Delete original image?

Delete all other versions?

Delete all revisions?

IOTD/TP stats

The following people like this image

The following people bookmarked this image

Warning

Flag malfunctioning thumbnails

Contains

Remove yourself as a collaborator

Plate-solving information