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For other uses, see Pinwheel Galaxy (disambiguation).
| Pinwheel Galaxy | |
|---|---|
| Observation data (J2000 epoch) | |
| Constellation | Ursa Major |
| Right ascension | 14h 03m 12.6s |
| Declination | +54° 20′ 57″ |
| Redshift | 0.000804 |
| Helio radial velocity | 241 ± 2 km/s |
| Distance | 20.9 ± 1.8 Mly (6.4 ± 0.5 Mpc) |
| Type | SAB(rs)cd |
| Size (ly) | ~170,000 ly in diameter[1] |
| Number of stars | 1 trillion (1012) |
| Apparent dimensions (V) | 28′.8 × 26′.9 |
| Apparent magnitude (V) | 7.86 |
| Other designations | |
| Messier 101, M101, NGC 5457, UGC 8981, PGC50063, Arp 26 | |
| References: [2][3][4][5][6][7] | |
The Pinwheel Galaxy (also known as Messier 101, M101 or NGC 5457) is a face-on spiral galaxy distanced 21 million light-years (six megaparsecs)[3] away in the constellation Ursa Major, first discovered by Pierre Méchain on March 27, 1781, and communicated to Charles Messier who verified its position for inclusion in the Messier Catalogue as one of its final entries.
On February 28, 2006, NASA and the ESA released a very detailed image of the Pinwheel Galaxy, which was the largest and most detailed image of a galaxy by Hubble Space Telescope at the time.[8] The image was composed from 51 individual exposures, plus some extra ground-based photos.
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