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Galaxy M101 in Ursa Major

Galaxy M101 is large but faint, with only a vague smudge visible though small telescopes from the suburbs.  Only with larger telescopes from a dark rural site can one detect the hint of spiral structure.  At a distance of 27 million light years, M101's huge size of 170,000 light years is 70% larger than our own Milky Way Galaxy, making it one of the largest known disk galaxies.   With long exposure astrophotographs such as this, striking asymmetry of the extended spiral arms is revealed.  The image above combined 115 minutes of clear luminance with 70 minutes of H-alpha, combined with Red-Green-Blue exposures of 20, 15, and 15 minutes respectively.  I used an ST10-XME camera with Astrodon filters through a TEC140 at my observatory.  This image below, obtained 2 years earlier from my light-polluted backyard observing deck, combined 4 hours of Luminence exposures with Red-Green-Blue exposures of 30, 30, and 45 minutes respectively.  An ST10XME camera was used through a Celestron C8 telescope with a 0.67x reducer.

Music:  Maybe I'm Amazed, Paul McCartney