M101, The 'Pinwheel Galaxy', is a face-on type Sc spiral galaxy 27 million light years from us, and was discovered by Pierre Mechan on the 27th March 1781.
227 years and 11 days later I decided to have a crack at imaging it!

Image taken with a fork mounted 14 inch LX200 GPS @ F6.3 with an Atik 16HR and Astronomik filters, Tal 100R @ f10/DSI Pro/PHD guiding
Acquired with MaXIM DL, processed in Photoshop CS2.

Luminance. 15 x 3 minutes (April 7th & 8th), 51 x 4 minutes (April 28th)
Total luminance - 4 hrs 9 minutes.

Red. 20 x 3 minutes binned 2x2.
Green. 15 x 3 minutes binned 2x2.
Blue. 16 x 200 seconds binned 2x2.

Total integration time. 6 hrs 47 minutes & 20