Photographing the PINWHEEL GALAXY with a Small Telescope

The Pinwheel Galaxy (M101)

In this video, I take a picture of the Pinwheel Galaxy using a color camera and a 100mm refractor telescope.

My Images on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/astrobackyard/

This face-on, spiral galaxy is located 21 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major. M101 is an excellent deep-sky astrophotography target for many types of astronomical telescopes.

The final image of the Pinwheel Galaxy shared at the end of this video includes 3 hours and 30-minutes of total exposure time. I stacked a series of long-exposure images together (using calibration frames) to improve the signal-to-noise ratio.

Advice on building a deep-sky imaging kit: https://astrobackyard.com/deep-sky-astrophotography-kit/

The core pieces of the equipment used in this video were as follows:

Mount: https://astrobackyard.com/sky-watcher-eq6r-review/
Telescope: https://astrobackyard.com/sky-watcher-esprit-100-review/
Camera: https://astrobackyard.com/zwo-asi533mc-pro/
Reducer/Flattener: https://bit.ly/3swyc9B
Filter: https://astrobackyard.com/optolong-l-pro-filter-review/

As always, thank you for watching, and clear skies!

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