Into the Maelstrom: M101 The Pinwheel Galaxy (40hrs of RGB and HSO Continuum Subtracted)

[Seti Astro]

Combining over 13hrs of RGB and 28hrs of SHO narrowband to reveal the galactic maelstrom in the heart of M101 The Pinwheel Galaxy.

 

I struggled with how I wanted to present the data and settled on an RGB-Continuum Subtracted HSO Foraxx Palette, I am presenting the full RGBHSO version and just the HSO foraxx versions.  I kept the stars in both and I thought it added to the images.

What I find really surprising are the structures not only in M101 but in NGC5474, NGC5477, and NGC5486.  There are some HII regions designated in the SRM2012 catalog, especially for NGC5474, but the others really haven't been studied much.

The other very cool item is NGC5471.  There is really nice structure in all 3 narrowband channels and Hubble actually did some observing on it as well.

 

Link to Astrobin: https://astrob.in/336nmk/0/

 

Video I made on this capture:  https://youtu.be/OyvWC2F5hyw

 

Comments appreciated!

 

All this data screams for some interaction, so please check out the interactive slider I made for this image too (should work on desktop and mobile)!

https://www.setiastro.com/m101slider

https://www.setiastro.com/galaxies

 

 

 

https://www.setiastro.com/m101slider

 

NGC5474

 

NGC5477

 

NGC5486

 

NGC5471

 

 

Edited March 25 by Seti Astro
Slider working on desktop and mobile now.

[MartinB]

Very interesting and revealing presentation.  Well done, quite a lot of work has gone into this.