M101 - The Pinwheel Galaxy (Alan Howell)

M101 - The Pinwheel Galaxy

Link: https://www.starpathimages.com/Photography/Astrophotography/

M101 - The Pinwheel Galaxy

Link: https://www.starpathimages.com/Photography/Astrophotography/

This galaxy and I have a history. M101 was one of the first galaxies I imaged after cutting my astroteeth on the Andromeda Galaxy many years ago with just a simple DSLR camera and tripod. It has always been difficult to capture from my light polluted suburban sky. But, this week, the skies gave me a brief window of opportunity and I was finally able to capture about 7hrs of exposure time at about 1600mm (f/7) the past couple of nights. So far, this represents the best view yet I've captured from my backyard of this massive galactic beast, The Pinwheel Galaxy. I hope you enjoy it!
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Messier 101 is a classic, face-on, spiral galaxy, also known as the Pinwheel Galaxy, located 25 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Ursa Major.

The giant spiral disk of stars, dust and gas is 170,000 light-years across — nearly twice the diameter of our galaxy, the Milky Way. M101 is estimated to contain at least one trillion stars. The galaxy’s spiral arms are sprinkled with large regions of star-forming nebulas. These nebulas are areas of intense star formation, created from the giant pink-to-orange-red molecular hydrogen clouds. Brilliant, young clusters of hot, blue, newborn stars trace out the spiral arms, contrasted to the larger, older red stars in the background.

The Pinwheel Galaxy was discovered in 1781 by astronomer Pierre Méchain, one of Charles Messier’s colleagues.

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	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
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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
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	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
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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.

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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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Status	Basic failed
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	9270428
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

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M101 - The Pinwheel Galaxy

M101 - The Pinwheel Galaxy

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M101 - The Pinwheel Galaxy

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