M101 the Pinwheel galaxy

swag72

swag72

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Sara
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The Pinwheel Galaxy (also known as Messier 101, M101 or NGC 5457) is a face-on spiral galaxy distanced 21 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major, first discovered by Pierre Méchain on March 27, 1781.

M101 is a large galaxy comparable in size to the Milky Way. With a diameter of 170,000 light-years it is roughly equal the size of the Milky Way. It has a disk mass on the order of 100 billion solar masses, along with a small central bulge of about 3 billion solar masses.

This is an image with 48 hours worth of exposure - A number of the exposures are 30 minutes and the rest are *only* 10 minutes long



M101 The Pinwheel galaxy by Sara Wager, on Flickr

You can see a larger version on my website here
 
What can I say. Over the last several weeks I have looked at hundreds of images in deep sky photography and yours are most certainly up there with the very best.
 
Excellent, simply wonderful ;)
 
Hope said:
Thats a gorgeous shot!

What equipment did you use?
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I use a Mesu mount, ODK10 telescope and an astro mono cooled camera. You can see information about my kit on my website. Glad that you like the shot :)

Gaz J said:
What can I say. Over the last several weeks I have looked at hundreds of images in deep sky photography and yours are most certainly up there with the very best.
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Thanks Gary - Very kind of you to say :)

Norkie said:
Excellent, simply wonderful ;)
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Thanks Jak - Much appreciated :)
 
I am not envious of the skill.
I am not envious of the patience.
I am not envious of the PP expertise.
I am lying in all 3 previous statements!!!

As always, Sara, great image. Thanks for sharing.
 
21 million light years. An incomprehensible distance, yet you're still able to capture and portray such an outstanding image. Thanks for sharing.
 
Brilliant as always, I am amazed at what can be captured from our little ball of rock. 48 hours though
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Massive amounts of respect for this! It's hard to imagine the dedication involved but it sure is worth it! Simply amazing!
 
Aaah its an old picture :):):)

That's what it looked like a long long time ago.

See if you can get an uptpdate one.;);)

Just joking. An amazing photo. Despite what you say you have the patience of not sure what.

Fantastic. Many thanks.....

Mj
 
brilliant.........(y)

thanks for making me seem incredibly small and insignificant
 
Mark Johnson said:
Aaah its an old picture :):):)

That's what it looked like a long long time ago.

See if you can get an uptpdate one.;);)

Just joking. An amazing photo. Despite what you say you have the patience of not sure what.

Fantastic. Many thanks.....

Mj
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You're so right Mark!! And one M101 can look very similar to another :) Thanks for your comment... glad that you like it :)

LeeRatters said:
I wouldn't even know where to start :)
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Cheers Lee - There's so much information out there to make it easier for us all :)

Yardbent said:
brilliant.........(y)

thanks for making me seem incredibly small and insignificant
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I know what you mean John ..... we are so very small :) Glad that you like it
 
Mark Johnson said:
Aaah its an old picture :):):)

That's what it looked like a long long time ago.

See if you can get an uptpdate one.;);)

Just joking. An amazing photo. Despite what you say you have the patience of not sure what.

Fantastic. Many thanks.....

Mj
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New picture but of old light!

Completely agree on the patience point, both at taking and PP stage.
 
@Nod - No patience required at the taking stage!! I just fire up the equipment, set it all running and go to bed :) As long as there's been no cloud in the night I wake up to perhaps 7 hours or more data. The patience is in the post processing for sure, and also masses of patience is required to NOT cut corners and gather enough data. There's a huge temptation to start getting data, have a quick look at it to see how it's going then carry on thinking that you can get away with less...... you generally can't :)

Thanks Nick - Glad you like them :)
 
Having the dedication and patience (and memory!) to set the rig running before beddybyes is more than I still have!
 
Nod said:
Having the dedication and patience (and memory!) to set the rig running before beddybyes is more than I still have!
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It's all permanently in my observatory setup.... just need to power everything up and that#s it LOL!!! Really there's nothing to remember :)
 
swag72 said:
It's all permanently in my observatory setup.... just need to power everything up and that#s it LOL!!! Really there's nothing to remember :)
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I can go to bed and forget why I'm there!!!
 
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