Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Ursa Major (UMa)  ·  Contains:  Cigar Galaxy  ·  M 82  ·  NGC 3034
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M82 LHaRGB - The Cigar Galaxy, andrea tasselli
M82 LHaRGB - The Cigar Galaxy
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M82 LHaRGB - The Cigar Galaxy

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
M82 LHaRGB - The Cigar Galaxy, andrea tasselli
M82 LHaRGB - The Cigar Galaxy
Powered byPixInsight

M82 LHaRGB - The Cigar Galaxy

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Description

M82 was a quite laboured work. It started of quite easily in 2005 (unguided shots). Then I realised that I would need to use H-alpha to bring out the HII jets and started collecting H-alpha in 2007 (guiding), first with 5 min subs then (not enough SNR!) with 10 min subs until in 2009 I was entirely fed up with it and drew a line; that was it, good or bad. And so here it is. Small fray compared with today's images I assume but was a good rendering with good resolution back then.

M82 is a good contender for the longest imaged object ever (from me). Reason being that I tended to use prime imaging time for hi-res imaging, lousy conditions for colour binning and strong moonlight for H-alpha. So anytime I didn't have much else to go for I plumped for either M82 or M57. Obviously the H-alpha exposures are blended into both Luminance and the red channel.

As an image for first day of the year I'd say that a starburst galaxy is a fitting match.

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