Wow, this ended up being a much longer exposure time than I'd realized. 50 hours! That actually gives it the crown for my longest exposure, by a long shot. You'd think I would see more at 50 hours, but alas, light pollution is the enemy of us all. From underneath Bortle 7, I did manage to get some hints of the IFN, which I guess is good!
M81 & M82, members of Charles Messier's list of things that aren't comets, are behind the constellation Ursa Major. They lie about 12 million lightyears away, and the two are physically near each other in space. They are gravitationally interacting, which is causing disruption in each galaxy, stirring up the gas and dust into a frenzy of star formation. M82, the lower of the pair in this shot, has massive outflows of red-glowing hydrogen gas, and you can see many little red splotches in M81, indicating star-forming nebulae.
The IFN, or Integrated Flux Nebula, is a large cloud of dust surrounding the Milky Way that is lit by the combined light of all the stars in the galaxy. That is
cool!!!! It is very faint, as one might guess, but it will show up in photos around the celestial poles if you take a long enough total exposure time. Check out
https://www.astrobin.com/b0kj1g for a shot I took under darker skies that reveals it better.
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