M101, the PinWheel Galaxy, is perhaps 'the' quintessential example of a face-on spiral galaxy. Discovered by Pierra Méchain in 1781, the galaxy is roughly 21 million light-years distant from Earth and found in the constellation Ursa Major. It's spiral arms contain numerous bright star-forming (H2) regions, many of which have unique NGC identifiers. M101 is large with a diameter at least twice that of the Milky Way galaxy and containing at least a trillion stars.

Data for this image was acquired between May 5 and May 9 at Rusty's RV Ranch located in the 'boot heel' region of New Mexico near the town of Rodeo. The nights of May 7th and 8th were particularly good. This was the first time that I used purely CCD data to image M101, and just the second time that I employed N.I.N.A. to remotely manage my gear and imaging sessions. Autofocusing was performed frequently - usually every 2 to 5 subs.

The field of view used to acquire the image is shown in the Imaging Details box. The image above is cropped and reduced in size. Clicking the image above will open up a larger, uncropped version.

Imaging Details
Imaging Dates	May 4-9, 2024
Imaging Location	Rusty's RV (+31.9, -109.0)
Constellation	Ursa Major
Imaging Telescope	Stellarvue 115 fluorite triplet
Imaging Camera	Atik 460EX
Imaging Filter(s)	L, R, Ha, G, B
Exposures	L - 120 sec; R,G,B - 180 sec, Ha - 300 sec
Guiding	50mm f/4 guide scope, 2x Barlow, Lodestar X2, PhD Guiding
Image Processing	Initial sub stretching and alignment performed using Nebulosity; Photoshop CS5 used to process the stacked subs. Topaz DeNoise AI used to reduce noise and sharpen the image.