Although I've previously photographed this galaxy in my early days, I decided to re-shoot it using some of the new techniques I've picked up. You can imagine my surprise back in May, when just a few days after getting started, the news broke that a Supernova had just been discovered. I was over the moon seeing the exploded star appear in the photos. Needless to say, I thought this would be a great time to do a full project highlighting the Ha areas within the galaxy. Not to be deterred by the windy London weather and my awful levels of LP, I managed to collect 4 hrs of Ha, 7 hours of Luminance (both with 9.25 Edge HD + ASI294mm) and 10 hrs of OSC RGB (Celestron 8" XLT + ASI294MC). Data wasn't perfect due to wind gusts, but I was pleased nonetheless. I must say, I had to resist stretching the data into overly artistic considerations given there appeared to be an ample amount of dust/tidal streams surrounding M101.  I was tempted to see if there was any IFN nearby but held off given the potential to ruin the image with London's finest light pollution gradients no doubt lurking in the shadows (no pun intended!).

Please do ensure you look at the previous versions in the revisions gallery, especially the cropped version and let me know which you prefer. Hope you enjoy!

NASA details as follows:
About 170,000 light-years across, this galaxy is enormous, almost twice the size of our own Milky Way galaxy. The colors of the Milky Way stars can also be found in the starlight from the large island universe. Its core is dominated by light from cool yellowish stars. Along its grand design spiral arms are the blue colors of hotter, young stars mixed with obscuring dust lanes and pinkish star forming regions. Also known as the Pinwheel Galaxy, M101 lies within the boundaries of the northern constellation Ursa Major, about 23 million light-years away.

A nearby star has exploded and humanity's telescopes are turning to monitor it. The supernova, dubbed SN 2023ixf, was discovered by Japanese astronomer Koichi Itagaki three days ago and subsequently located on automated images from the Zwicky Transient Facility two days earlier. SN 2023ixf occurred in the photogenic Pinwheel Galaxy M101, which, being only about 21 million light years away, makes it the closest supernova seen in the past five years, the second closest in the past 10 years, and the second supernova found in M101 in the past 15 years. Rapid follow up observations already indicate that SN 2023ixf is a Type II supernova, an explosion that occurs after a massive star runs out of nuclear fuel and collapses.