M101: A Spiraling Beauty

M101, or the Pinwheel Galaxy, is one of the most famous spiral galaxies, located around 21 million light-years away in Ursa Major (aka The Big Dipper). It is not part of our Local Group of galaxies, and resides in the M101 Group, a neighboring galaxy cluster to our own.

The image shown in this post was captured in late April of this year. I am very far behind in my image processing and decided to use this as a warmup in my effort to get caught up. The total exposure is a little over six hours of exposures, using the Mid-field rig: a 130mm diameter, 925mm focal length refractor which is coupled to an ASI1600MM Pro camera. The camera sensor was cooled to -20°C and then exposed multiple 5 minute frames using separate red, green, and blue filters. The images were then brought together in the astrophotography software PixInsight.

The annotated version of the image reveals not only M101 but also several neighboring galaxies and star-forming regions, such as NGC 5477, a faint dwarf galaxy, and NGC 5471, a bright star-forming region within M101 itself. These regions appear bright and bluish due to the intense light emitted by young, hot stars being born there. Other notable objects include PGC 49919 and PGC 2464645, which are background galaxies located approximately 105 million light-years away, adding depth to the image by showcasing objects much farther beyond M101.