M101, the Pinwheel Galaxy, is a massive face-on spiral galaxy in Ursa Major with broad arms of gas, dust, and active star formation.
What It Is
A massive face-on spiral galaxy with sweeping arms filled with gas, dust, and active star formation.
History
Recently hosted a bright supernova (2023) that was visible to amateur astronomers.
Science Notes
- Likely contains hundreds of billions to a trillion stars.
- One of the largest known spiral galaxies.
- Its structure is slightly asymmetric, likely due to past gravitational interactions.
- age
- Mixed stellar populations (stars from millions to billions of years old)
- distance
- ~20-25 million light-years (~120-150 quintillion miles)
- width
- ~160,000-200,000 light-years (~940 trillion to 1.2 quadrillion miles)
