At MST at MSU, one of my classes
is Astronomy. Part of that class is to make a report about a certain
type of object located in the MESSIER
catalog. My partner, Tina, and I
are doing a report on M101. This is called "The Pinwheel Galaxy"
because, duh, it is shaped like a pinwheel, at least to the human eye.
As follows is our report so far of M101.
"M101"
M101, one of the Messier Objects, is a Pinwheel Galaxy located in the constellation,
Ursa Major. Its Right Ascension (hrs:min) is 14:03.2. Its Declination
(deg:min) is +54:21. This means that right now (July/August) from
Earth you would see it in the northwestern sky at night.
Although it is the brightest of a group of at least 9 galaxies, from a low-powered telescope on Earth, only its center is visible to the eye. Yet, M101 is revealed as one of the most noticeable Grand Design spirals in the sky. Visually, it is very symmetrical, yet its core is considerably displaced from the center of the disk.
Quite impressing is the fact that 3 Supernovae have been discovered in M101. Max Wolf discovered the first Supernova, SN 1909, in 1909. It had a magnitude of 12.1. It, according to the SEDS web site, is of a “Peculiar Type”. The second Supernova, 1951H, occurred in September 1951 and was a “Type II” Supernova. The third, and last, Supernova (SN 1970G), occurred July 30, 1970. Like 1951H, it too was a “Type II” Supernova. It reached a magnitude of 11.5.
Some physical
information is as follows. M101’s visual brightness is magnitude
7.9. It is 27,000,000 light years from Earth. Its linear diameter
is over 170,000 light years, making it one of the largest “disk” galaxies.
That's about it . . .
=) You like? You can read more about M101 under the Messier
site, which is http://www.seds.org/messier/
