M-101 the Pinwheel Galaxy
M-101 is one of my favorites. It is located in Ursa Major and is a broad face-on spiral with a bright core and diffuse outer arms. It is noticeably unsymmetrical as its core is quite out of center with its arms. Only the bright core is visible in smaller instruments, but some spiral structure can be seen with larger telescopes. Several diffuse nebulas are visible in the spiral arms below as well as dust lanes in the spirals.
This image is a composite of 4 exposures on hypered Kodak PJ400. Two were for 1 hour and two were for 90 minutes, They were made with my 12.5" f/7 Newtonian telescope.