Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Ursa Major (UMa)  ·  Contains:  Bode's nebulae  ·  M 81  ·  M 82  ·  NGC 2976  ·  NGC 3031  ·  NGC 3034  ·  The star 24UMa
M81/M82/Volcano Nebula, Dimitris Platis
M81/M82/Volcano Nebula
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M81/M82/Volcano Nebula

M81/M82/Volcano Nebula, Dimitris Platis
M81/M82/Volcano Nebula
Powered byPixInsight

M81/M82/Volcano Nebula

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Description

What a pleasure to be able to shoot 2 targets in one weekend, mainly because of being able to use my lens at f2.8...and ofcourse because of the excellent weather in Greece. Unfortunately, this lens produces horribly bloated blue stars...so I had to come up with an entirely new way of dealing with this problem.......I think I managed to contain the issue.....Hope u like it.

The Μ81/Μ82 galaxy pair in the constellation of Ursa Major are a rather popular object for astrophotographers. Located at a distance of 12 million light years, being 150,000 light years from each other.

Our Galaxy is surrounded by molecular clouds of dust, hydrogen, carbon monoxide and other elements expelled by our Galaxy. In contrast to nebuli, where molecular clouds are illuminated by the light of the stars, the nebulosity in this region is illuminated by the light of the Galaxy itself, therefore earning the name Integrated Flux Nebulae. These molecular clouds are of extremely low surface brightness and it requires significant effort to bring forth.

The region besides the M81/M82 galaxy pair, it contains an IFN region known as Volcano Nebula (MW3) as well as many other galaxies of lower brightness. M81, also known as Bode’s Galaxy, because it was discovered by Bode in 1774 has a diameter of 92,000 light years, while M82, also known as Cigar Galaxy, has a diameter of 37,000 light years and is at an extremely active phase of star formation.

Immediately, at the left of M81, barely visible, we can see the companion galaxy of M81, Holmberg IX, while a bit more to the left we can observe the Seyfert galaxy NGC3077. At the middle and down of the image we can see galaxy NGC2976, while to the right the rather less bright NGC 2892 is located. Finally, at the middle right of the image NGC2787 is visible.

At the right upper quadrant of the image the Volcano Nebulae is clearly visible along with the brightest star of the area, 24 Ursa Majoris.

Location: Mount Parnonas, Greece (1400m)

Constellation : Ursa Major

Imaging scope: Nikon 180ED (@f2.8)

Imaging CCD: QHY9M (-20°C)

Guiding CCD: Lodestar

Mount: Skywatcher EQ6

Guiding scope: APM optical finder 240mm FL

Image scale : 6.28 arcsec/pixel

Filters: 2''Baader

Subexposures:

Luminance bin 1X1 152x2min

RGB bin 1x1 20x2minsec

Calibration frames :

Darks 25x, Flats 25x, Bias 100x, Dark Flats 25x

Calibration/Processing : Pixinsight 1.8

Capture : Sequence Generator Pro

Tracking : PhD2 2.5.0

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M81/M82/Volcano Nebula, Dimitris Platis