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M101 -- Pinwheel Galaxy in Ursa Major

The irregular but tightly wound spiral arms of this galaxy contain populations of young stars and many star-forming regions. This large galaxy is comparable in size to our Milky Way , containing about 1 trillion stars.

 

M101 lies 20 million light years distant.

 

This image was captured under high desert skies near Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA with a telescope of 12" aperture at f/8 and an electrically-cooled CCD camera. 7 hours total exposure (HaLRGB).

 

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Uploaded on June 20, 2015
Taken on April 27, 2017