M101

This is the Pinwheel Galaxy (M101) discovered in 1781. It is about 21 million light years from Earth and located in the constellation Ursa Major. It is 170,000 light years across compared to our Milky Way with is only 87400 light years across. M101 contains about 1 trillion stars.  This image was taken over two nights May 11th and 12th.   This image consists of a total of 7hrs and 42min of exposure.  This is made up of the following individual frames:

I took the images from my backyard observatory using an Astro-Tech AT130EDT telescope with a  focal length 910mm.  I used the ZWO ASI 294MM Pro camera and Antlia LRGB  and Ha filters.   All process using PixInsight.