M101 Pinwheel Galaxy

The Pinwheel Galaxy, also known as Messier 101 (M101), is one of the best known spiral galaxies in the night sky.

 

M101 is a grand design spiral galaxy (a spiral galaxy with prominent and well-defined spiral arms) located in the constellation Ursa Major, the Great Bear. It is about 170,000 light years in diameter, which makes it roughly 70 percent larger than our galaxy, the Milky Way.

 

It is approximately 20.9 million light years distant from Earth, which means that we are seeing it as it was about 20.9 million years ago.

 

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Telescope: Celestron C11-A XLT Schmidt Cassegrain OTA

Mount: SkyWatcher EQ6-R Pro

 

Controller: ZWO ASIAIR Plus 256G

Main Camera: ZWO ASI533MC Pro at -10C

Filter: Optolong L-Pro filter

Focuser: ZWO EAF

Guide Camera: ZWO ASI174MM Mini guidecam

Guide via: ZWO OAG

 

Stacked from:

Lights 93 at 120 seconds, gain 101, temp -10C

Darks 30 at 120 seconds, gain 101, temp -10C

Flats 30 at 1.08 seconds, gain 101, temp -10C

Dark Flats 30 at 1.08 seconds gain 101 temp -10C

 

Bortle 4 sky.

Integrated the saved frames in Astro Pixel Processor.

Processed in PixInsight

Added captions in Photoshop CS4

Done