National Air and Space Museum News Media Access

The Pinwheel M101 is a spiral galaxy like the Milky Way, though nearly its twice.

The composite of M101 shown above shows four different, combined views of the galaxy obtained by four NASA space observatories, covering all these different phenomena: an infrared observation by the Spitzer Space Telescope (red), a sharp-eyed optical image by the Hubble Space Telescope, an ultraviolet image by GALEX, and a sharp X-ray image by the Chandra X-ray Observatory.