Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Ursa Major (UMa)  ·  Contains:  M 101  ·  NGC 5422  ·  NGC 5457  ·  NGC 5473  ·  NGC 5474  ·  NGC 5477  ·  NGC 5485  ·  NGC 5486
Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
Pinwheel Galaxy - M101, DeepSkyView
Pinwheel Galaxy - M101
Powered byPixInsight

Pinwheel Galaxy - M101

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
Pinwheel Galaxy - M101, DeepSkyView
Pinwheel Galaxy - M101
Powered byPixInsight

Pinwheel Galaxy - M101

Equipment

Loading...

Acquisition details

Loading...

Description

This is the Pinwheel Galaxy, M101, in a wide-ish field LRGB composite. Usually one would image this beauty at a slightly larger focal length, but this wider field puts the galaxy into a nice context. M101 is a large galaxy, quite comparable to the Milky Way. With a diameter of 170,000 light-years it is about equal in size. It has a disk mass of around 100 billion solar masses, along with a central bulge of about 3 billion solar masses.

The image is composed of 24 x 900 sec luminance and (16,20,20) x 600 sec RGB frames taken at the Deep Sky West Observatory. Standard processing with modest color enhancement.

Comments

Sky plot

Sky plot

Histogram

Pinwheel Galaxy - M101, DeepSkyView