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Giant galaxies weren't assembled in a day. Neither was this Hubble Space Telescope image of the face-on spiral galaxy Messier 101 (M101). It is the largest and most detailed photo of a spiral galaxy that has ever been released from Hubble. The galaxy's portrait is actually composed of 51 individual Hubble exposures, in addition to elements from images from ground-based photos.

The giant spiral disk of stars, dust, and gas is 170,000 light-years across or nearly twice the diameter of our galaxy, the Milky Way. M101 is estimated to contain at least one trillion stars. Approximately 100 billion of these stars could be like our Sun in terms of temperature and lifetime.

M101 (also nicknamed the Pinwheel Galaxy) lies in the northern circumpolar constellation, Ursa Major (The Great Bear), at a distance of 25 million light-years from Earth. Therefore, we are seeing the galaxy as it looked 25 million years ago � when the light we're receiving from it now was emitted by...

My name is Adam Mateo Fierro and I am a photographer specializing in fine art landscapes. I find myself in that venerable tradition of photographers who are visually drawn to rocks and such. "The world is going to pieces and all Adams and Weston photograph is rocks and trees!" - Henri Cartier-Bresson I affirm with Ansel Adams that the natural world is enormously beautiful; only consider the majestic variety of lakes and rivers, waterfalls and oceans, mountains and forests. And should the world find itself on the precipice, I believe that "beauty will save the world" (Prince Myshkin, The Idiot by Dostoevsky). Museum quality prints are available on canvas, metal & acrylic perfect for your business, home, family or friends with...