Messier 101 (Pinwheelgalaxy)
I have been subscribing to data from the Deep Sky West (DSW) Observatory for some time. DSW is located in New Mexico and offers several fully equipped systems. One of the data sets I received, was data from the galaxy Messier 101 located in the constellation Ursa Major.
The images were taken with the following equipment:
| Location | Rowe, New Mexico |
| Telescope | Takahashi FSQ-106 |
| Focal length [mm] | 530 |
| Focal ratio | 5 |
| Mount | Paramount MyT |
| Camera | QSI 683-WSG-8 |
| Filter | L:Hα+[NII]:R:G:B |
| Exposure time [min] | 350:480:330:280:390 |
| Resolution | 2.08″/px |
Data calibration and registration and the final processing was done with PixInsight. Hα+[NII] was assigned to the red channel. The result was as follows:
The faintest star in this image has an apparent magnitude of 22.1 magG (SDSS DR15).
Beside M101 there are a lot of background galaxies in the image. Furthermore I marked the two most distant quasars:
The two highest redshift quasars [Flesh 2015] in the image are:
SDSS J140529.74+540159.7 z=3.99 magG=21.1 (Gaia DR2)
SDSS J140053.75+543012.1 z=4.17 magG=20.0 (Gaia DR2)
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