Pinwheel Galaxy

M101 · NGC 5457

A huge, near-perfect face-on spiral about 70 percent wider than the Milky Way, riddled with star-forming regions.

Pinwheel Galaxy, a spiral galaxy
PhotographEuropean Space Agency & NASA; image processing: Davide De Martin (ESA/Hubble); CFHT image: Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope/J.-C. Cuillandre/Coelum; NOAO image: George Jacoby, Bruce Bohannan, Mark Hanna/NOAO/AURA/NSF · CC BY 4.0
Spiral
type · SABc
21 million ly
from Earth · measured
170k ly
across
7.9
apparent magnitude

Because its light is 21 million ly from home, you are seeing Pinwheel as it looked roughly 21 million years ago. The photons left before that much of history had passed, and are only now reaching us.

Nearest galaxies
WhirlpoolSpiral3.9 million ly
apartMessier 106Spiral7.3 million ly
apartSunflowerSpiral8.5 million ly
apartBlack EyeSpiral12 million ly
apartBode'sSpiral12 million ly
apartCigarStarburst13 million ly
apart
Worlds in the same direction on the sky→

Source: structural data (position, morphology, brightness, redshift) from OpenNGC (CC BY-SA). Distance from published measurements.

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