Discovered by Pierre Mechain on March 27, 1781. Also known as NGC 5457 and more familiarly as the Pinwheel Galaxy, this island universe is approximately 27 million light years from Earth. It is a large spiral galaxy spanning nearly 170,000 light years across and presents itself to us in a beautiful face-on configuration. Located within the HII star-forming spiral arms of M101 are 10 bright condensations each having their own NGC designation. They are NGC 5447, 5449, 5450, 5451, 5453, 5455, 5458, 5461, 5462 and 5471. There are also a number of more distant galaxies scattered throughout the field of view, the most prominent being MGC+9-23-25 just left of the bright star in the upper left corner.

I used a custom-built dffraction mask on the front of the refractor to obtain the spikes on the brightest stars in the above image.