Known sometimes as the "Pinwheel Galaxy," Messier 101 is a grand design spiral galaxy, a disk of hundreds of billions of stars with a small central bulge and prominent arms spiraling out from the center.
Messier 101 is very large: At nearly 200,000 light-years across it is about twice the size of our Milky Way Galaxy.
Its high levels of star formation and very well-defined spiral arms are likely caused by gravitational interactions with neighboring galaxies. [View all images]
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