M101, Pinwheel Galaxy (plus NGC 5477 dwarf companion) (Doug Summers)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Ursa Major (UMa) · Contains: M 101 · NGC 5457 · NGC 5461 · NGC 5471 · NGC 5477

M101, Pinwheel Galaxy (plus NGC 5477 dwarf companion), Doug Summers

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M101, Pinwheel Galaxy (plus NGC 5477 dwarf companion)

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M101, Pinwheel Galaxy (plus NGC 5477 dwarf companion)

This is my take on Messier 101, the Pinwheel Galaxy. The galaxy is pretty faint in visual scopes due to its large size and subsequent low surface brightness. It comes alive nicely for astrophotography. M101 is 21 million light years distant, with a diameter of about 170K light years. It's a massive galaxy, with an estimated 1 Trillion stars. Dwarf NGC 5477 is near the right center edge. It's an irregular at 20 million light years distance. Many fainter, much further galaxies are in the field.

What I like about this image is the very faint, tenuous outer arms which are just barely visible. Lots of images of this galaxy show an imbalanced spiral with one side much "flatter" than the other. Deeper exposures show the more subtle arms, giving a more balanced look to the overall galaxy design.

A few exposures were captured at home last year but never processed. The majority were captured at the TAAA CAC dark site in March and April of this year.

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Description: SPCC & BXT linear deconvolution

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Celestron RASA
The OSC Club (One Shot Camera)

Galaxies
Messier Objects
z-Chiricahua Astronomy Complex

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Astrometry.net job	6872852
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M101, Pinwheel Galaxy (plus NGC 5477 dwarf companion)

M101, Pinwheel Galaxy (plus NGC 5477 dwarf companion)

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M101, Pinwheel Galaxy (plus NGC 5477 dwarf companion)

M101, Pinwheel Galaxy (plus NGC 5477 dwarf companion)

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