June 15, 2015 9:14 pm

Mission 1 Completed. Are You Ready for Mission 2?

Thank you all for volunteering for #CelestronMissionStarTalk.

Our first unidentified celestial object has been correctly identified, and a winner chosen from the correct answers.

Linda Kay-Bunnell correctly identified the photo above as M101, the Pinwheel Galaxy. Another acceptable answer would have been NGC 5457.

Linda was selected out of all the correct responses to win a SkyMaster 15×70 Astronomy Binocular. Linda, along with everyone else who submitted a correct answer, has been entered into the Grand Prize Drawing to win a NexStar Evolution 6 Computerized Telescope. (No purchase is necessary to enter. One entry per mission per social media channel.)

By the way, the image above was taken by John Davis using an 11” Celestron Rowe-Ackermann Schmidt Astrograph on March 2014 at the Bucksnort Observatory in Texas.

Mission 2 Begins… Now

Are you read for Mission 2?

Every week for the next four weeks, we’ll post the winner of the previous week’s mission here on our website. There will be six missions in all to identify photos of celestial objects like comets, galaxies, nebulas, planets and star clusters.

If you’d like to volunteer for Mission 2, visit @Celestron on Twitter, @CelestronUniverse on Instagram, or Celestron Telescopes on Facebook.

You’ll find your next unidentified celestial object waiting for you now. You can also find previous missions, contest rules and submission guidelines here on Celestron’s website.

Follow StarTalk and Celestron on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook for new mission announcements and previous mission winners every Monday.