Galaxy · Ursa Major

Galaxie du Moulinet

A spiral galaxy seen face on, 25 million light-years away in Ursa Major.

In the catalogue, the thumbnail for this object is cropped in on its subject, so that it can be seen at card size. This view here is the whole photograph, as I produced it.

Pierre Méchain discovered it in 1781. Its disc is 170,000 light-years across, nearly twice the Milky Way. It is thought to hold at least a thousand billion stars. Seen face on, its light spreads over a large area, and it is therefore more diluted than that of a galaxy seen edge on. Its arms only stand out with a great deal of exposure, under a dark sky.

Source: NASA, catalogue Messier de Hubble, Messier 101. A figure wrong? Report it.

2h 40m 1 shot

0 towards 22h 12m · cumulative integration on this object

Temps d'intégration : the total exposure time, the sum of every exposure stacked on an object.