Messier 101 the glorious "Pinwheel" Galaxy (Barry Wilson)

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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Messier 101 the glorious "Pinwheel" Galaxy

Link: https://barrywilson.smugmug.com/

Powered byPixInsight

Messier 101 the glorious "Pinwheel" Galaxy

Link: https://barrywilson.smugmug.com/

I have imaged M101 a number of times from both my home observatory and now from both remote setups I share ownership and jointly operate with Steve Milne. We deliberatley chose to go deep this time aiming for as much detail as our optical system would allow, knowing that the galaxy is almost a frame filler for the Sony chip in the QSI690.

From Wikipedia: "M101 is a large galaxy, with a diameter of 170,000 light-years. By comparison, the Milky Way has a diameter of 258,000 light years. It has around a trillion stars, a twice the number in the Milky Way. It has a disk mass on the order of 100 billion solar masses, along with a small central bulge of about 3 billion solar masses. M101 has a high population of H II regions, many of which are very large and bright. H II regions usually accompany the enormous clouds of high density molecular hydrogen gas contracting under their own gravitational force where stars form. H II regions are ionized by large numbers of extremely bright and hot young stars; those in M101 are capable of creating hot superbubbles. In a 1990 study, 1264 H II regions were cataloged in the galaxy. Three are prominent enough to receive New General Catalogue numbers - NGC 5461, NGC 5462, and NGC 5471. M101 is asymmetrical due to the tidal forces from interactions with its companion galaxies. These gravitational interactions compress interstellar hydrogen gas, which then triggers strong star formation activity in M101's spiral arms that can be detected in ultraviolet images."

Processing was a delight though a few of the larger stars required taming and PI trickery (the triplet oiled fluorite objective of the TEC140 does love big blue stars!).

Data acquisition: Barry Wilson & Steve Milne

Processing: Barry Wilson

Entre Encinas y Estrellas (e-EyE)

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	2608619
PixInsight job	6WOV47F68F7G14WMVFQYVXV87VR1NE6U
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

RA (center)	14h03m10s.429
RA (top/left)	14h01m16s.803
RA (top/right)	14h01m17s.283
RA (bottom/right)	14h05m02s.486
RA (bottom/left)	14h05m05s.545

Dec (center)	+54°22′03″.39
Dec (top/left)	+54°42′46″.89
Dec (top/right)	+54°01′22″.90
Dec (bottom/right)	+54°01′11″.78
Dec (bottom/left)	+54°42′37″.47

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Messier 101 the glorious "Pinwheel" Galaxy

Messier 101 the glorious "Pinwheel" Galaxy

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Messier 101 the glorious "Pinwheel" Galaxy

Messier 101 the glorious "Pinwheel" Galaxy

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