Lying 25 million light years from Earth, Messier 101 is a spiral disk of stars, dust and gas about 170,000 light years across, which is nearly twice the diameter of our own galaxy, the Milky Way. The spiral arms contain large regions of star-forming nebulas. Imaged from the back garden in Colchester, my picture contains almost 600 x 20" exposures at ISO 1600, on a modified Nikon D750 DSLR, Sky-Watcher Explorer 150p, EQ5 Pro, via Stellarmate in Kstars/Ekos. Stacked in AstroPixelProcessor, cropped and adjusted in Photoshop and Lightroom.