DETAILS
Exposure: 16×600″ @ ISO 800
Telescope: 6″ f4 astrograph with Baader MPCC
Filter: Hutech IDAS LPS P2 MFA
Mount: Skywatcher EQ6 Pro
Camera: Cooled Canon 550D
Date: 18th February 2012
Location: Coll d’Ares (Àger, Lleida, Spain)
Comments: First serious shot with the new astrograph built by me.

The Pinwheel Galaxy (also known as M101 or NGC5457) is a face-on spiral galaxy in the constellation Ursa Major about 21 million light-years away from the Earth. It is a large galaxy compared to ours, it is seventy percent larger than the Milky Way.
It has huge and very bright H II regions that accompany the enormous clouds of high density molecular hydrogen gas where stars form. Those regions are ionized by the large number of extremely bright and hot young stars.
The image shows some other galaxies that comprise the M101 Group. NGC 5474, the most remarkable, is situated to the left of M101, NGC5477 just above M101, NGC5473 to the right up, NGC5485 and NGC5486 at the right upper corner and NGC5422 at the right bottom corner.