I took an image of this galaxy a couple of years ago with a DSLR. It was one of my first deep sky images and I was ecstatic with how it turned out. This one was taken with a cooled dedicated astronomy camera - and I think it is much better.

M101 (NGC 5457) is a very large (170,000 light years in diameter) face-on, spiral galaxy in Ursa Major - the Great Bear or “the Big Dipper”. It is one of the largest spiral galaxies out there. At a distance of approximately 27 million light years, it has a visual magnitude of 7.9 and a low surface brightness, requiring dark skies to see. Usually only the central bright core is visual in small scopes. It is almost twice the size of our own Milky Way galaxy and has a luminosity of about 3 billion suns and its disk contains on the order of 100 billion solar masses. For technical details, gear used, etc., go to: M101 - The Pinwheel Galaxy ( PSugg ) - AstroBin