Image of Messier 101, the Pinwheel Galaxy, in Ursa Major by Mearl Balmer with assistance from his grandson, Grayson on July 8, 2018. The image shows M101 in the upper right and another spiral galaxy, NGC5474. The Pinwheel Galaxy is much larger than our Milky Way Galaxy and over 25 million light years away.
Mearl reports that Grayson was a big help aligning the computer-controlled scope to several stars, as he struggled to look through the finder Telrad on a night with much glare from the Hopewell factories. They also identified a star in that galaxy that was the remnant of a supernova explosion long ago.
The image is a composite of 22 five minute exposures. Mearl uses a remote WiFi system to control his system after initial manual setup.