Pinwheel Galaxy M101

Svbony SV503 80ED refractor on Celestron AVX, Risingcam Sony IMX571 camera.

Natural color, no filters.

Total time  184 min, 30sec subs

No guiding, no apps, no gadgets, optical polar alignment. No added or removed stars, no re-colored stars, no re-shaped stars.

Images stacked in DSS (free) and minimally edited in Gimp (also free).

At the University of California Steele/Burnand Desert Research Center (SBDRC) in Borrego Springs, Calif.


I was able to locate a multitude of faint galaxies in this image ... starting with several NGG and UGC objects, down to four LEDA catalog galaxies and even one MCG catalog galaxy.

NGC = New General Catalogue
IC = Index Catalogue
UGC = Uppsala General Catalog of Galaxies
MCG = Morphological Catalog of Galaxies
MGC = Millennium Galaxy Catalog
LEDA = Lyon-Meudon Extragalactic Database
PCG = Principal Galaxies Catalogue (1989)[i] [/i]

Upper Right Quadrant : UGC 8837 – 24 Mly dwarf galaxy Mag 14.2 (extreme upper right, edge on galaxy (to the left of bluish bright star)) UGC 8882 – 27 Mly low surface bright galaxy (upper right, one third of the way between upper right corner galaxy and M101) LSB_G typeMCG+09-23-018 – 960 Mly barred galaxy type SBbc Mag 16 galaxy (right under bright yellowish double star in upper right corner)NGC 5368  - 215 Mly barred spiral galaxy  (Upper Right, outside image ! ) LEDA 2470911 – 1,377 Mly spiral galaxy type Sb (slightly above and to the right of M101) or MCG+09-23-025 Seyfert_2 

Upper Left Quadrant  : NGC 5422 – 92 Mly lenticular galaxy  Mag 12 (top) NGC 5475 – 85 Mly early spiral galaxy (top extreme left) NGC 5473 – 88 Mly lenticular galaxy  (near and to the left of M101) UGC 9051 – 246 Mly low surface brightness galaxy Mag 16.5 (a bit below and to the left of NGC 5485 (upper left quadrant)) LEDA 2483087 – 573 Mly type Sa elliptical 12.7Mag ? aka PGC 2483087 NGC 5443 – 83  Mly barred spiral galaxy type Sb  (image sometimes cutoff in extreme upper left) 

Lower Left Quadrant  : NGC 5484 – 266 Mly  elliptical galaxy (to the left of M101) also known as IC 2550NGC 5485 -   97 Mly lenticular galaxy NGC 5486 – 110 Mly irregular galaxy … also known as UGC 9036 or LEDA 50383NGC 5477 – 21 Mly dwarf galaxy Mag 14.0 (just below and to the left of M101) AGN candidate LEDA 248609 – (dist na) 13.6 Mag lenticular (a bit to the right of NGC 5477, below M101) aka PGC248609UGC 9071 – 105Mly spiral galaxy (extreme lower left, edge-on galaxy) 

Lower Right Quadrant : NGC 5474 – 21 Mly dwarf galaxy Mag11.3 (bottom right) nearest companion and satellite of M101, with offset bulge LEDA 2457777 – 562 Mly Mag 16.5  Sc type normal spiral galaxy (aka PCG 2457777) type M or  “Multiple Galaxy” and LEDA 2456843 – 1,454 Mly elliptical E-type galaxy (under faint stars, bottom center, halfway between NGC 5474 and UGC 9071