M101 Super Nova - SN 2023 ixf

​Approximately 21 million years ago a star exploded. In May of 2023, the light from that exploding star reached earth. The star is located in a galaxy called M101 or the Pinwheel galaxy. The Pinwheel Galaxy (also known as Messier 101, M101 or NGC 5457) is a face-on spiral galaxy 21 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Ursa Major. It was discovered by Pierre Méchain in 1781 and was communicated that year to Charles Messier, who verified its position for inclusion in the Messier Catalogue as one of its final entries.
 
The images show a picture of the galaxy taken from Anacortes WA on the 24th of May, 2023 with a circle around the area of the exploding star, known as a Super Nova, with a zoomed in portion also circled to the right and above. To the right and below is a zoomed in view of that same area of M101 taken from Anacortes WA on the 19th of April, 2020 (sorry that one is a little grainy,…I am getting a little better at this as the years go on).