M101: Pinwheel Galaxy

Click on image for larger version.

M101 is an extremely large "Grand Design" spiral galaxy. Even at a distance of 27 million light years away, it still sprawls its 170,000 light year diameter across a large patch of sky. This image only shows the central third of its countenance. Many of the bright star forming regions in the spiral arms have their own NGC designations. Also note the myriad of background galaxies that can be seen in various places through the disk. Click here for the FULL RESOLUTION image.

Equipment

16in RC Optical Systems telescope Operating at f/8
Paramount ME Robotic Telescope Mount
SBIG ST10XME CCD camera with color filter wheel

L R G B color production was used to create this image.

Luminance = 180 minutes binned 1x1
 Red = 30 minutes binned 2x2
 Green = 30 minutes binned 2x2
 Blue = 30 minutes binned 2x2
  • A small part of this data was acquired with Bonnie Fisher and Mike Shade.
  • Digital Development (DDP) via Maxim/DL was also used in order to display the the very dim and very bright details of the image simultaneously.

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    Minimum credit line: Adam Block/NOAO/AURA/NSF

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    Updated: 01/28/2003