This giant spiral disk of stars, dust and gas is 170,000 light-years across, or nearly twice the diameter of our Milky Way galaxy. M101 is estimated to contain at least one trillion stars. About 100 billion of them could be similar to our Sun. Credit for Hubble Image: NASA, ESA, K. Kuntz (JHU), F. Bresolin (University of Hawaii), J. Trauger (Jet Propulsion Lab), J. Mould (NOAO), Chu (University of Illinois, Urbana), and STScICredit for CFHT Image: Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope/ Cuillandre/CoelumCredit for NOAO Image: G. Jacoby, B. Bohannan, M. Hanna/ NOAO/AURA/NSF

---

Size: 6000px × 4690px
Location: Space
Photo credit: © American Photo Archive / Alamy / Afripics
License: Royalty Free
Model Released: No

Keywords: astronomical, astronomy, deep, galaxies, galaxy, hst, hubble, jet, jpl, laboratory, nebula, orbit, probe, propulsion, research, science, scientific, space, star, supernova, telescope