Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Ursa Major (UMa)  ·  Contains:  Bode's nebulae  ·  M 81  ·  M 82  ·  NGC 3031  ·  NGC 3034
M81 and M82, Kaos
M81 and M82
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M81 and M82

M81 and M82, Kaos
M81 and M82
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M81 and M82

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Description

Seeing during exposures was poor to average.

This is a really rich galaxy field. There are literally dozens of galaxies you can make out in this image. Many are very faint while others are easily identified. I enjoy looking for them in images. There is some nice Ha that revealed itself above M81. I am not sure what it is, but it is interesting.

This was one of the more difficult processing projects I have ever undertaken. Getting good color in M81 was a real issue as well a bringing out the dust lanes. Overall, I was able to get some nice color out of the data and was really happy with the dust lanes in both M81 and M82. One of the major issues was there was enough IFN to make processing extremely difficult as the BG was very spotty, but the signal was too weak to bring it out in the final image. I could have added perhaps another 10 hours of Lum, but after almost 23 hours of exposures, I was ready to move on.

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M81 and M82, Kaos