The Pinwheel Galaxy M101 (NGC 5457; mag 7.9) in Ursa Major will be well placed in the evening sky in coming weeks. On 22 April it will reach its highest point in the sky at around midnight local time, and on subsequent evenings it will culminate four minutes earlier each day.
From Los Angeles , it is visible all night. It will become visible at around 20:33 (PST), 42° above your north-eastern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. It will then reach its highest point in the sky at 00:49, 69° above your northern horizon. It will be lost to dawn twilight at around 05:07, 41° above your north-western horizon.
At a declination of 54°20'N, it is easiest to see from the northern hemisphere but cannot be seen from latitudes much south of 15°S.
At magnitude 7.9, M101 is quite faint, and certainly not visible to the naked eye, but can be viewed through a pair of binoculars or small telescope.
The position of M101 is as follows:
| Object | Right Ascension | Declination | Constellation | Magnitude | Angular Size |
| M101 | 14h03m10s | 54°20'N | Ursa Major | 7.9 | 0'00" |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.
The sky on 23 Apr 2017
| The sky on 23 April 2017 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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9% 26 days old |
All times shown in PDT.
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Source
The circumstances of this event were computed using the DE430 planetary ephemeris published by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
This event was automatically generated by searching the ephemeris for planetary alignments which are of interest to amateur astronomers, and the text above was generated based on an estimate of your location.
Image credit
© Digitised Sky Survey (DSS); Second Palomar Observatory Sky Survey (POSS-II)