This is an image of Messier 101, the Pinwheel Galaxy in Ursa Major, which was taken on May 12, 2012 from Sky Trails Observatory in Summerland. It was taken through a guided Orion 8" Ritchey-Chretien Astrograph by a modified Canon XSi DSLR camera operating at ISO 1600. A total of 11 ten minute long Light images together with 10 Dark and 10 Flat images were processed in ImagesPlus.
M101 is a spiral galaxy 17.5 million light years distant from the Earth. The image includes the supernova that exploded in the galaxy on August 24, 2011, and its location is marked in the following picture.