15 by 3min, piggybacked on polar aligned LX90, unguided. Dark, Bias & Flat calibrated

Right Ascension 14 : 03.2 (h:m)
Declination +54 : 21 (deg:m)
Distance 27000 (kly)
Visual Brightness 7.9 (mag)
Apparent Dimension 22.0 (arc min)

Discovered by Pierre Méchain in 1781.

M101 was discovered by Pierre Méchain on March 27, 1781, and added as one of the last entries in Charles Messier's catalog. It was one of the first "spiral nebula" identified as such, in 1851 by William Parsons, the third Earl of Rosse.

Although extended 22 arc minutes on photos and quite bright, only the central region of this galaxy is visible in smaller telescopes, best at low powers. Suggestions of the spiral arms can be glimpsed in telescopes starting from 4 inch as nebulous patches. Several of these patches (i.e., spiral arm fragments) were assigned their own catalog numbers by William Herschel and later observers; according to the NGC and Burnham, there are 9 such numbers, 3 of which go back to Herschel who has found them on April 14, 1789, while the RNGC states that five of the others don't exist (ne); it mentions however that deVaucouleurs has them as knots: NGC 5447 (H III.787), 5449 (ne), 5450 (ne), 5451 (ne), 5453 (ne), 5455, 5458 (ne), 5461 (H III.788), 5462 (H III.789), and 5471.