I have been wanting to capture the Integrated Flux Nebula (IFN) around the M81, Bode's Galaxy, and M82, Cigar Galaxy, for a very long time but thought it would be a hopeless enterprise. However, last year our neighbors cut down some large trees in this direction so I finally had a view from the Happy Frog Astroshed. IFN is dust that lies outside the Milky Way's galactic plane but is illuminated from the entire galaxy rather than a one nearby star or stars. IFN is much further than dust inside the galaxy so it is very faint, thus requires dark skies and long integration. I was still unsure that the IFN would show up as the skies in southern Connecticut are not exactly dark - at my house it is Bortle 5-6. In order to make up for the lack of dark skies, I collected over 45 hours worth of data - a record for me.

The M81 and M82 are very popular galaxies and are often imaged together because of their close proximity to each other. M81 is a spiral galaxy approximately 12 million light-years away and a little over 96,000 LY across. M82 is a heavy star-forming galaxy and is therefore classified as a starburst galaxy. It is also located approximately 12 Million LY away but is only 150,000 LY from M81. It is only about 30,000 LY across but its past close encounter with M81 is believed to have caused the intense star formation. Other items of note are the irregular dwarf galaxy PGC28757 located just below M81 and the small spiral galaxy PGC28225 located in the upper left side of the image. The spiral nature of PGC28225 can be discerned if you look closely.

Processing this image took a great deal of time and patience. I started with the RGB then Ha so I could blend it into the red channel. I did my normal way, however, after watching a PixInsight video on Ha blending using Spectral Photometric Color Calibration (SPCC) I decided to give it a try. The results were better! After a couple of days playing around the HaRGB combo, the Luminosity was the next step. Although none of the IFN were in any of the subs it was quite evident in the stacked image although it took a lot of tweaking to bring it out. The hardest part was blending the luminosity into the HaRGB. This took lots of crazy processing gymnastics and I am not even sure I know what I did but I am happy with the result.

Dates: 12-20-22, 2-1-23, 10-13, 11-10, 11-11, 11-12, 11-13, 11-14, 11-16, 11-18, 11-19, 12-11, 12-12, 12-13, 12-15, 12-20

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