Messier object 101 also known as the
Pinwheel Galaxy is a face on Galaxy in the constellation Ursa Major,
near the handle of the big dipper. M101 is a relatively large galaxy
that spans a diameter of 170,000 light-years which makes is 70%
larger than our own Milky Way Galaxy. This galaxy reveals several
spiral arms that show some nice detailed dust lanes. The galaxy is
asymmetrical which is believed to have been caused by a collision
with another galaxy in the past. Back in August 24, 2011 a Type Ia
supernova, SN 2011fe was discovered at a magnitude 17.2 and reached
9.9 at it's peak
On March 21, 2012 I went out and found
M101 which through the eyepiece from my light polluted skies was an
extremely dim object. Easily could have missed if I wasn't on a
determined hunt to find this galaxy. Once I found it I had to make
sure I wasn't just seeing things, so I connected my camera to the
telescope to take a long exposure image of it to see if this was
truly M101. Once I confirmed the object I made sure camera focus was
as good as I could get it, and I started a series of shots to stack
to bring out more and more detail.
M101 - The Pinwheel Galaxy. Click to embiggen.
This image is composed of 45 images at
30 second exposures, ISO 1600, prime focus on my Omni XLT 150 with a
Canon 350D. These images were taken over a course of two separate
nights. I also used 30 dark frames, and 20 bias/offset frames. I
haven't completely mastered flat frames yet so I didn't include the
ones I took as they would not have enhanced the image at all. Stacked
the images in Deep Sky Stacker and post processed the image in Gimp. I hope Gimp
starts allowing 16-bit images soon so I don't have to turn my 16-bit
tiffs to 8-bit in order to edit them. Stacking images of this galaxy
were much easier than my previous stack of Comet Garradd a few days earlier.
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