by Dave Mitsky
I captured this 100-second-long image of the grand design spiral galaxy M101 (NGC 5457) in Ursa Major on the morning of February 22, 2013, using the Bradford Robotic Telescope's 14" f/11 Celestron C14 SCT and FLI MicroLine camera located on Tenerife in the Canary Islands. A Celestron focal reducer yielding an effective focal length of 1877mm at f/5.3 was employed. M101's extremely luminous Giant HII Regions, star forming regions that are the sites of massive super star clusters, are annotated.
For further information on M101 (the Pinwheel Galaxy), browse http://messier.seds.org/m/m101.html and http://www.robgendlerastropics.com/M101text.html