NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope shared a beautifully captured image of the spiral galaxy M101 also known as the Pinwheel Galaxy or Messier 101, on their official Instagram account and netizens are mesmerised. The photo, which was generated after combining 51 exposures taken during a period of 10 years between 1994 to 2003 has received a great deal of appreciation from followers.
The Pinwheel Galaxy looks like a giant spinning wheel, spreading its shimmering spiral arms formed with dust and star forming nebula. Nebulas are areas of intense star formation within giant molecular hydrogen clouds. It is the largest galaxy ever captured in photographs by Hubble Space Telescope. The gaps of the photo were filled by ground-based images, which the Hubble couldn’t capture.
Something interesting about the Pinwheel Galaxy is that it is believed to contain one trillion stars. Also, it is 170,000 light-years across nearly twice the diameter of our galaxy, the Milky Way. Technology taking us to galaxies beyond our universe is definitely a marvel. Few space study enthusiasts asked if we could travel further into the galaxy and find out how many planets does it comprise or if there are any living creatures.
Talking about the location of the Pinwheel Galaxy, it is located in the constellation of Ursa Major, which is 25 million light-years far away from Earth.NASA said that the space enthusiasts can spot M101 through a small telescope as well. The time for observation would be during April. Pierre Méchain discovered the Pinwheel galaxy in 1781.
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