M101, the Pinwheel Galaxy (Steed Yu)

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 · NGC 5474 · NGC 5477 · PGC 2448110 · PGC 2456753 · PGC 2464645 · PGC 2468609 · PGC 2469762 · PGC 2816075 · PGC 49919 · Pinwheel galaxy

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M101, the Pinwheel Galaxy

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M101, the Pinwheel Galaxy

The Pinwheel galaxy M101, located near the Big Dipper, is one of our closest neighbors, 21 million light-years away. It is 170,000 light-years in diameter, much larger than our Milky Way galaxy, containing trillions of stars and forming several spectacular spiral arms. Looking through a telescope large enough in the dark night sky, one can faintly see a cloud of light shaped like a pinwheel, which is why the galaxy is named.

Deeply exposures reveal more details about the Pinwheel galaxy. Its blue spiral arms are lit up with pink light, suggesting that a large number of new stars are being nurtured and born in this galaxy. The apparent asymmetry in the outer spiral arms suggests that it has been gravitationally pulled by other galaxies - such as NGC 5474 in the upper left corner of the image.

This dwarf galaxy is one of the companion galaxies of the Pinwheel galaxy and is small, consisting of only a few billion stars, but unexpectedly has a spiral-arm-like structure. However, its spiral arm is completely tilted to one side, and the overall shape is like a scallop, so it is obviously the loser in that gravitational pull. It is lucky that this dwarf galaxy is not swallowed by the Pinwheel galaxy, which is hundreds of times larger than it is.

After all, the basic rule of the jungle is universal.

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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.
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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	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	4982194
PixInsight job	SNJTJAKPH2N1H8Z8VGOPF5PQOBMRKC10
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

RA (center)	14h03m27s.482
RA (top/left)	14h06m20s.476
RA (top/right)	14h06m25s.987
RA (bottom/right)	14h00m28s.920
RA (bottom/left)	14h00m34s.542

Dec (center)	+54°07′39″.92
Dec (top/left)	+53°28′09″.91
Dec (top/right)	+54°46′53″.82
Dec (bottom/right)	+54°46′53″.93
Dec (bottom/left)	+53°28′10″.30

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M101, the Pinwheel Galaxy

M101, the Pinwheel Galaxy

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Image Index:

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M101, the Pinwheel Galaxy

M101, the Pinwheel Galaxy

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