M101 - Pinwheel Galaxy (Orestis Pavlou)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Ursa Major (UMa) · Contains: M 101 · NGC 5457 · NGC 5473 · NGC 5474 · NGC 5477

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M101 - Pinwheel Galaxy

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M101 - Pinwheel Galaxy

M101 - Pinwheel Galaxy

M101 is a face-on spiral galaxy located 21 million light-years from Earth. It was first discovered in 1781 and was later dubbed as the "Pinwheel" Galaxy due to its shape.

M101 has a diameter of 170,000 light-years, similar to the diameter of our own Milky Way galaxy, but has around 1 trillion stars (more than twice the number of stars of the Milky Way). It also has a high number of enormous hydrogen gas clouds (mostly observed in red colour), where stars are being formed.

The weird shape of M101 was caused by gravitational (tidal) forces from interactions with other neighboring galaxies. These interactions also caused the increase in star formation in M101.

Two of these neighboring galaxies that M101 interacts with are also shown in the image: NGC 5474 (upper left) and NGC 5477 (faint smudge at the top center-right). You can also notice that the companion galaxy NGC 5474 on the upper left corner is also disturbed by the gravitational interaction with M101 so that its core is off-center.

Although this image is the result of a total of 10 hours of imaging, it was a very difficult target to process, mostly due to heavy light pollution.

Imaging details:

Location: Nicosia, Cyprus

Light frames: 113x300" and 11x180" at 1600 ISO (10 hours total)

64 Dark + 30 Flat frames

Dates: 01/03, 07/03, 08/03, 14/03, 17/03 and 26/03/2019

Imaged with APT

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	2625001
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

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M101 - Pinwheel Galaxy

M101 - Pinwheel Galaxy

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Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):

M101 - Pinwheel Galaxy

M101 - Pinwheel Galaxy

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Acquisition details

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