his is one of my favourite galaxies. It is one of the largest and brightest in the observable sky from my latitude, and it’s full of fascinating details. The pink glowing spots are the nebulae consisting of ionized hydrogen, where the new stars are formed. Clusters of these new hot stars are visible as the bright blue dots in the spiral arms.
The Pinwheel is nearly twice as large as our Milky Way galaxy – about 170,000 light-years across, and it contains trillion stars. Their light travelled for 21 million years to reach my camera in Victoria, BC.
This image is an integration of 5.5 hours of exposure, collected over two nights April 2025.
