M-101

A large faint, face-on spiral galaxy in Ursa Major. Apparent size 22'x22' magnitude is given as 9.6, but difficult to see in telescopes with less than 8" of apature. Galaxy contains an estimated 16 billion suns. Apparent distance is approx. 15 million light years. Imaged with the ST-6 camera, Tri-colour RGB of 10-2-30 minutes.