M99 is a face-on grand design spiral galaxy lying at a distance of 49 million light-years in the constellation Coma Berenices. It is known as the Little Pinwheel Galaxy due to its resemblance to the better known Pinwheel Galaxies, M33 and M101. Despite that marked similarity, it is seldom imaged in comparison to M33 and M101, likely due to its much smaller size. Nonetheless, M99 exhibits prominent areas of star formation in its open spiral arms with numerous HII regions and clusters of type O and B supergiants. Accordingly, it has displayed 4 supernovae since 1967, thus rivaling the Fireworks Galaxy for that title. The bright star to lower left is magnitude 6.5 SAO 100039 and the distant galaxy in the upper left corner is PGC 3948.
Exposures: L:R:G:B = 130:60:60:55 minutes at f/8.3.