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Here is a
wide field view of the Pinwheel Galaxy. Catalogued as M101, the Pinwheel
is a nice face-on spiral galaxy. It lies in the
northern circumpolar constellation Ursa Major (The Big Bear),
at a distance of 25 million light-years from Earth. See also the Hubble Space Telescope image of M101.
In order to produce the color image
seen here, I worked with data coming from 4 different
photographic plates taken
at Palomar Observatory
between 1993 and 1996.
The original file is 8,423
×
6,261 pixels with a resolution of about 1 arcsec per pixel. The image shows an area of sky large
2.3°
× 1.7° (for
comparison, the full-Moon is about 0.5° in diameter). Other images of the same celestial field found online
This image is a composite from black and white images taken with the Palomar Observatory's 48-inch (1.2-meter) Samuel Oschin Telescope as a part of the second National Geographic Palomar Observatory Sky Survey (POSS II). The images were recorded on two type of glass photographic plates - one sensitive to red light and the other to blue light and later they were digitized. Credit: Caltech, Palomar Observatory, Digitized Sky Survey. |
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