Messier 76 - The Pinwheel Galaxy in HaOiiiRGB

This is my latest capture of Messier 101, also known as the Pinwheel Galaxy, a beautiful face-on spiral galaxy located about 21 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major. Capturing this galaxy in HaOIIIRGB was a major project, requiring around 25 hours of total exposure time and the use of two different filters to bring out its full potential. I used my Optolong L-Pro filter to preserve as much of the natural colour of the galaxy as possible. For the star forming regions I used my Optolong L-eNhance filter, which helped highlight the Ha emission areas, the difference with and without Ha was pretty big. I did not expect to find so many regions of active star formation in my own data.

Back in 2023, I was fortunate enough to capture supernova SN 2023ixf in Messier 101, just one day after it was reported on social media. At that time the supernova appeared as an incredibly bright point in the image, though two years later it is no longer visible. Despite that Messier 101 remains an incredibly beautiful and captivating galaxy, and I am very happy with how the final image turned out after 25 hours of exposure and a full day of processing.