Bode's Galaxy And The Cigar Galaxy (M81 and M82) (estabrook)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Ursa Major (UMa) · Contains: Bode's Galaxy · Cigar Galaxy · HD85161 · HD85458 · M 81 · M 82 · NGC 3031 · NGC 3034

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Bode's Galaxy And The Cigar Galaxy (M81 and M82)

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Bode's Galaxy And The Cigar Galaxy (M81 and M82)

Bode's Galaxy And The Cigar Galaxy (M81 and M82). Neither my telescope rig nor my light-polluted sky is well suited to galaxies, but galaxies fascinate me, so I still look forward to galaxy season and I do the best I can to capture them. This year I'm kicking off galaxy season with the classic pair of galaxies discovered by Johann Bode in 1774, which I've never imaged before.

I caught the photons in one night in late December, when the moon was not too bright to interfere with broadband imaging, but I've struggled to process it since then. My usual stretching method (notably EZ Soft Stretch in PixInsight) blew out my galactic cores, so I tried my hand at Generalized Hyperbolic Stretch, which preserved the detail, but disturbed the color balance I liked in my original attempt. After several iterations (some of which are posted revisions here), I settled on the balance in the Final image.

Despite the modest scope and less-than-ideal conditions, I'm thrilled to have captured so much detail--especially the dots of purple nebulosity in M81 and the red jets shooting out of M82. Enjoy and clear skies!

(Captured: C6, AM5, Hyperstar, ASI183MC Pro, Optolong L-Pro filter. Processed: AstroPixelProcessor, PixInsight, StarXterminator, NoiseXterminator, BlurXterminator)

NOVAC

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	7105982
PixInsight job	TJG828KJN7K62MCESRQZMH94C30JD163
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	09h56m05s.70
RA (top/left)	09h47m10s.75
RA (top/right)	09h53m37s.66
RA (bottom/right)	10h05m11s.53
RA (bottom/left)	09h58m23s.44

Dec (center)	+69°19′51″.5
Dec (top/left)	+69°06′23″.5
Dec (top/right)	+70°07′26″.4
Dec (bottom/right)	+69°31′35″.5
Dec (bottom/left)	+68°32′06″.4

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Bode's Galaxy And The Cigar Galaxy (M81 and M82)

Bode's Galaxy And The Cigar Galaxy (M81 and M82)

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Bode's Galaxy And The Cigar Galaxy (M81 and M82)

Bode's Galaxy And The Cigar Galaxy (M81 and M82)

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