M101

on the INT Wide-Field Camera

M101. 13h 43m 28s (208d 52' 42") +55d 24' 25" (March 27, 1781) `Nebula without stars, very obscure and pretty large, 6' or 7' diam. between the left hand of Bootes and the tail of the Great Bear. Difficult to distinguish when graticule lit.' (diam. 7')

The picture was produced by composing three, two-minute, exposures taken through R, V and B Harris photometric filters, approximating the normal red, green and blue passbands. The area shown is approximately 30x30 arc minutes, ie the full field of the Wide-Field Camera ccd mosaic at the prime-focus of the 2.54m Isaac Newton Telescope.

Previous Cambridge-Astronomy headline pictures.

psb@ast.cam.ac.uk