7/3/2012 #Astronomy
Deep Sky Object: The Pinwheel Galaxy (also known as Messier 101 or NGC 5457) is a face-on spiral galaxy distanced 21 million light-years (six megaparsecs)away in the constellation Ursa Major.
The full Moon shines in the southeast after dark. The bright star far to its upper left is Altair. Look just above Altair, by about a finger-width at arm's length, for fainter Tarazed (Gamma Aquilae). Tarazed, an orange giant, is much more luminous than Altair but is almost 20 times farther away (330 light-years, compared to Altair's distance of 17 light-years). http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/ataglance