This galaxy is among several in the neighborhood of M101. The sketch at left presents a 129X view in my 10-inch equatorial Newtonian. NGC 5474 covers a 10'x5' area at the center of the drawing. the core and main disk appear roughly 5' in diameter. With averted vision a fairly large spiral arm is seen arcing westward from the disk. A second, shorter arm reaches to the east-southeast. Neither appears on DSS images, but this is a loose spiral galaxy and arms should range far from the core. A 14th magnitude star dimly glows in the foreground just north of the central disk region. A tight triangular grouping of 11th and 12th magnitude stars is seen about 9' to the northwest. The 10.8 magnitude spiral galaxy is about 26' northwest of 7.1 magnitude HD 123518. M101 lies beyond the field boundary to the northwest.