Spiral Galaxy Messier 101 in Ursa Major
Taken by Thomas Wildoner on February 5, 2024 @
Weatherly, PA, USA
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Camera Used: Unavailable Unavailable
Exposure Time: Unavailable
Aperture: Unavailable
ISO: Unavailable
Date Taken: 2024:03:07 07:24:14
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Details:
The Pinwheel Galaxy (also known as Messier 101, M101 or NGC 5457) is a face-on spiral galaxy 21 million light-years 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 within giant molecular hydrogen clouds. Brilliant, young clusters of hot, blue, newborn stars trace out the spiral arms. (ref: Wikipedia and NASA)
Observation data (J2000 epoch)
Constellation: Ursa Major
Right ascension: 14h 03m 12.6s
Declination: +54° 20′ 57″
Distance: 20.9 ± 1.8 Mly
Apparent magnitude (V): 7.9
Tech Specs: Orion 8” RC Telescope, ZWO ASI2600MC camera running at -10F, 47 x 60 seconds, Celestron CGEM-DX pier mounted, ZWO EAF and ASIAir Pro, processed in DSS and PixInsight. Image Date: February 5, 2024. Location: The Dark Side Observatory (W59), Weatherly, PA, USA (Bortle Class 4).
Photographer's website:
https://thedarksideobservatory.com
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