The Pinwheel Galaxy (also known as Messier 101, M101 or NGC 5457) is a face-on, counterclockwise intermediate spiral galaxy located 21 million light-years (6.4 megaparsecs) [5] from Earth in the …

Jun 4, 2025 · Pierre Méchain, one of Charles Messier’s colleagues, discovered the Pinwheel galaxy in 1781. Located 25 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Ursa Major, M101 has an …

Apr 17, 2025 · The Pinwheel Galaxy is an intermediate spiral galaxy located 20.9 million light years away in the constellation Ursa Major. With an apparent magnitude of 7.9 and an apparent size of …

Feb 22, 2024 · In this article, we'll take a closer look at the Pinwheel Galaxy, including its location, size, structure, and how to observe it. The Pinwheel Galaxy is located approximately 21 million light-years …

"The giant spiral disk of stars, dust, and gas is 170,000 light-years across or nearly twice the diameter of our galaxy, the Milky Way. M101 is estimated to contain at least one trillion stars.

A: Due to its symmetric, open spiral arms and nearly face-on orientation, M101 resembles a pinwheel when viewed in optical or astrophotographic images. The nickname reflects its classic spiral …

Jul 7, 2023 · The Pinwheel Galaxy is the largest of a group of galaxies called the M101 group. These smaller “companion” galaxies (NGC 5204, NGC 5474, NGC 5477, NGC 5585, UGC 8837, and UGC …

Mar 7, 2025 · One of the most astonishing cosmic objects in the universe stands as the Pinwheel Galaxy. The spiral galaxy M101 stands among astronomers and stargazers as it lies in the …

Nov 25, 2019 · Home to one of the closest supernovae that we observed in the modern history of astronomy, located at the distance of almost 22 million light-years, the Pinwheel galaxy with its head …

Giant spiral galaxies were not built in a day. Construction on these mammoth objects, like Messier 101 (M101) shown in this Hubble Space Telescope image, lasted billions of years. This photograph of …