May 2009 Astrophotography Contest Winner:
Mamill

Messier 101 (M101) - The Pinwheel Galaxy
A face on spiral located in Ursa Major, M101 is ~27million LY from us. It spans ~170million LY across almost double the size of our own Milky Way. Discovered by Pierre Mechain in 1781 it was communicated to Charles Messier who verified its location and entered into his catalog.
The image was taken with a Takahashi FS-102 @ f6, SSPro DSCI, captured and pre-processed in Nebulosity 2, post processed and cropped in CS2, GradientXterminaator and Noise Ninja applied. 17x10min subs guided with a Takahashi FC-60, Meade DSI and PHDGuiding.