There are nights when everything simply comes together. Clear skies over Munich, stable conditions, and enough patience to let the universe slowly reveal itself. This image shows the Pinwheel Galaxy (Messier 101), captured with my Celestron Origin Mark II from Munich, Bavaria.

M101 is a face-on spiral galaxy in Ursa Major, famous for its delicate, loosely wound spiral arms and subtle star-forming regions. From a light-polluted environment, it is a challenging target — faint, extended, and unforgiving if exposure time is too short. That’s exactly what makes it so rewarding.

For this image, I collected 299 individual sub-exposures of 20 seconds each, resulting in a total integration time of 5,980 seconds. Over time, the galaxy gradually emerged from the background: first the brighter core, then the mottled structure of the spiral arms, and finally the faint outer regions sprinkled with star clouds.

What continues to impress me about the Origin Mark II is how accessible deep-sky imaging has become. Setup, tracking, and acquisition are remarkably smooth, allowing me to focus on framing and letting the photons pile up. Even under suburban skies, the system delivers fine detail and a natural color balance that preserves the soft, ghostly character of M101.

This image is not about perfection. It’s about the experience: watching a distant galaxy, tens of millions of light-years away, slowly take shape on the screen — one sub at a time. Moments like these are exactly why astrophotography is so addictive.

📸 Chasing Spiral Arms – Pinwheel Galaxy (M101) 🌌

A quiet January evening, cold air, and a galaxy far beyond our own — captured from my backyard in Bavaria.

🔗 Useful links

• https://www.celestron.com/products/celestron-origin-intelligent-home-observatory
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinwheel_Galaxy
• https://astrobackyard.com/pinwheel-galaxy-m101/