M101


A Pinwheel in the Northern Sky

Here’s another image from the 2019 Oregon Star Party, M101, the Pinwheel Galaxy.  Also cataloged as NGC5457, the Pinwheel is a large galaxy in Ursa Major, and about 21 million light-years from Earth.  Although not as large in diameter as our Milky Way (170,000 light-years versus 258,000 light-years), M101 has about 1 trillion stars, twice as many as the Milky Way.  It also has a lot of hydrogen regions that are typically star-forming regions. As with most of my broadband (natural color) images, this was captured and processed using LRGB, with only a handful of color frames (8 each of […]


Pinwheel Galaxy (M101)

(Updated Dec. 2017) Also known as M101, the Pinwheel Galaxy is in Ursa Major (the Big Dipper) and about 21 million light years from Earth. It is a spiral galaxy, like the Milky Way, but is unusually asymmetric.  The smaller galaxy on the left side is NGC5474, and there is an even smaller one above M101, NGC5477. Scope: AT111EDT at f/5.7 Mount: AP Mach1GTO Camera: QSI 683 at –20C