Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Messier 101: Pinwheel Galaxy

Charles Messier designated the object pictured here 101 in his catalog of fuzzy things in the sky that are not comets.

Known sometimes as the "Pinwheel Galaxy," Messier 101 is a grand design spiral galaxy, a disk of hundreds of billions of stars with a small central bulge and prominent arms spiraling out from the center.

Messier 101 is very large: At nearly 200,000 light-years across it is about twice the size of our Milky Way Galaxy.


Its high levels of star formation and very well-defined spiral arms are likely caused by gravitational interactions with neighboring galaxies. [View all images]

No comments:

Post a Comment