The Pinwheel Galaxy - M101 (Massimo Di Fusco)

The Pinwheel Galaxy - M101

The Pinwheel Galaxy (also known as Messier 101, M101 or NGC 5457) is a face-on spiral galaxy 21 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Ursa Major. It was discovered by Pierre Méchain in 1781 and was communicated that year to Charles Messier, who verified its position for inclusion in the Messier Catalogue as one of its final entries.
Messier 101 is estimated to contain 1 trillion stars and an unusually high number of H II regions, where new stars form. Three of these were bright enough to get their own designations in the New General Catalogue: NGC 5461, NGC 5462 and NGC 5471.
With a linear extension of 170000 light years, the Pinwheel Galaxy is about 70 percent larger than the Milky Way. The estimated mass of M101’s disk is about 100 billion solar masses, while its small central bulge has a mass 3 billion times that of the Sun. The galaxy has an absolute magnitude of -21.6, corresponding to a luminosity of 30 billion Suns. The galaxy does not appear to have a supermassive black hole at its centre.
M101 has five prominent companions: NGC 5204, NGC 5474, NGC 5477, NGC 5585 and Holmberg IV. Gravitational interaction with these galaxies is suspected to have triggered the formation of the grand design structure in M101 and distorted NGC 5474. The Pinwheel Galaxy and its companions form the M101 Group, a group of at least nine galaxies centred on M101. In addition to the Pinwheel’s companions, probable group members include the galaxies NGC 5238, UGC 8508 and UGC 9405.

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	7109681
PixInsight job	LUKCL5SGKYGFPENP5GZ0PXTYBVSG12GF
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	14h03m10s.23
RA (top/left)	14h06m26s.68
RA (top/right)	13h59m55s.46
RA (bottom/right)	13h59m56s.49
RA (bottom/left)	14h06m21s.33

Dec (center)	+54°22′39″.5
Dec (top/left)	+54°43′03″.9
Dec (top/right)	+54°43′32″.7
Dec (bottom/right)	+54°01′53″.1
Dec (bottom/left)	+54°01′26″.5

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