File:M101_hires_STScI-PRC2006-10a.jpg · Wikimedia Commons · See Wikimedia Commons
Pinwheel Galaxy
Sign in to saveAlso known as Messier 101, New General Catalogue 5457, Arp 26
spiral galaxy in the constellation Ursa Major
The Pinwheel Galaxy is a spiral galaxy located in the constellation Ursa Major, characterized by its distinctive rotating disk of stars arranged in spiral arms. It serves as an important object of study for astronomers seeking to understand the structure and behavior of spiral galaxies in the universe.
AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.
Wikidata facts
- Constellation
- Ursa Major
- Child body
- Q950782
- Distance from Earth
- 7.1121
- Radius
- 85000
- Image
- M101 hires STScI-PRC2006-10a.jpg
Show 13 more facts
- Commons category
- Pinwheel Galaxy
- discoverer or inventor
- Pierre Méchain
- galaxy morphological type
- S_AB
- catalog code
- Z 1401.5+5435
- apparent magnitude
- 13.671
- Commons gallery
- Messier 101
- time of discovery or invention
- 1781-03-27
- redshift
- 0.000811
- absolute magnitude
- -21.6
- epoch
- J2000.0
- right ascension
- 210.8024292
- declination
- 54.3487500
- radial velocity
- 243
via Wikidata · CC0
~7 min read
Encyclopedic overview
The Pinwheel Galaxy (also known as Messier 101, M101 or NGC 5457) is a face-on, counterclockwise intermediate spiral galaxy located 21 million light-years (6.4 megaparsecs) from Earth in the constellation Ursa Major. It was discovered by Pierre Méchain in 1781 and was communicated that year to Charles Messier, who verified its position for inclusion in the Messier Catalogue as one of its final entries.
On February 28, 2006, NASA and the European Space Agency released a very detailed image of the Pinwheel Galaxy, which was the largest and most detailed image of a galaxy by Hubble Space Telescope at the time. The image was composed of 51 individual exposures, plus some extra ground-based photos.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Pinwheel Galaxy” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.
Gallery (5)
Available in 63 languages
- Español
- Français
- Deutsch
- 中文
- 日本語
- Русский
- Português
- Italiano
- العربية
- हिन्दी
- Afrikaans
- Asturian
- Azerbaijani
- Bahasa Indonesia
- Basque
- be_x_old
- Belarusian
- Bosnian
Show 44 more
- Breton
- Bulgarian
- Burmese
- Catalan
- Chechen
- Corsican
- Croatian
- Czech
- Esperanto
- Estonian
- Finnish
- Greek
- Hebrew
- Hungarian
- Lithuanian
- Luxembourgish
- Macedonian
- Malagasy
- Mazanderani
- Nederlands
- Norwegian
- Norwegian Nynorsk
- Oromo
- Polski
- Romanian
- Scots
- Serbian
- Serbian (Latin)
- simple
- Slovak
- Sundanese
- Svenska
- Tatar
- Tiếng Việt
- Türkçe
- Ukrainian
- Welsh
- Wu Chinese
- Zaza
- zh_min_nan
- zh_yue
- فارسی
- ไทย
- 한국어
via Wikidata sitelinks · CC0