Note: There is some odd compression going on in the "Fit To Window" view, but the full resolution view should offer a smooth sharp image. 


I used 100 hours worth of the data in this image. This is this the most time that I have spent on a single image personally, and it is also the longest that I've seen a single person image the Galaxy Messier 82. Not only does it look really neat but there is far more structure visible in this image than almost any other "Small Telescope" amateur image that I've seen. This is mainly due to the amount of time that was spent imaging. I might edit it some more after receiving feedback from others but as things are, I'm pretty happy with this! I did struggle with the stars looking "right" though. My mistake was do blend the 70 hours of Ha with the red color channel across the whole image, including the stars.

Some interesting things to note:
• From what I have read, the Hydrogen being ejected from the core of M82 is propelled by massive amounts of stars going supernova.
• To the left of the galaxy you can see a small grey cloud. It would really be color much like the hydrogen near the galaxy, as it is also made of ionized hydrogen, by my camera and telescope were not sensitive enough to pick up on the red hue with the exposure time spend with the red color filter and the way that I edited it. This cloud feature is called "The Cap" and is not normally seen in small instruments or amateur images, from what I can tell
• Above the cap near the top edge of the image you can see a large grouping of tiny oval shapes. This is a cluster of galaxies that is around 2.5 billion light years away from us. Similarly there is a "Chain" cluster of small background galaxies to the right of M82.
• Throughout the image you can see small (to us) galaxies in the background of differing shapes sizes and colors.
• The image might seem dark, or bright, or the colors could be different on your screen as they are on mine. I need to calibrate my screens. 



The camera has large 9um pixels, so the moderately sized sensor still only is 1600x1100px, a nice sized file. This is uncropped and 100% scale, but slightly compressed to meet the 500kb file size limitations. I'll reply with a cropped uncompressed version if necessary. 

DSS, Gimp, and Topaz AI were used to compile/edit. 



I look forward to receiving constructive feedback on this image. Thank you for looking. 

Sub exposure times:
1000sec Hydrogen
300sec RGB
90 Sec Luminance