Bode's Galaxy - M81 (Alan Howell)

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

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Bode's Galaxy - M81

Link: https://www.starpathimages.com/Photography/Astrophotography/

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Bode's Galaxy - M81

Link: https://www.starpathimages.com/Photography/Astrophotography/

I still remember the first time I saw M81 (Bode's Galaxy) in a Hubble image years ago. It still blows my mind to this day to see it my scope or a hi-rez image. It truly is the quintessential grand spiral galaxy by definition. It captured my curiosity immediately and I knew I had to one day photograph it myself. I imaged it a couple times in years past but just didn't have the right skies and scope, or even the technical understanding to do it justice in a photograph. But now I'm finally pleased to release this image of Bode's after several nights of photographing it in a dark sky area. I'll be releasing prints for sale on this one soon...I hope you enjoy it!

15hrs. of RGB/5 hrs. Ha-Oiii at 1459mm f/7.1
Bortle Class 4 sky
Transparency: Average
Seeing: Average
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Discovered by the German astronomer Johann Elert Bode in 1774, M81 is one of the brightest galaxies in the night sky. It is located 11.6 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Ursa Major with an apparent magnitude of 6.9.

The galaxy’s spiral arms, which wind all the way down into its nucleus, are made up of young, bluish, hot stars formed in the past few million years. They also host a population of stars formed in an episode of star formation that started about 600 million years ago. Ultraviolet light from hot, young stars is fluorescing the surrounding clouds of hydrogen gas. A number of sinuous dust lanes also wind all the way into the nucleus of M81.

The galaxy’s central bulge contains much older, redder stars. It is significantly larger than the Milky Way’s bulge. A black hole of 70 million solar masses resides at the center of M81 and is about 15 times the mass of the Milky Way’s central black hole. Hubble research showed that the size of the black hole in a galaxy’s nucleus is proportional to the mass of the galaxy’s bulge.

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Distribution of astrophotographers

This table shows the number of distinct astrophotographers who have been assigned and IOTD/TP award compared to the total number of images awarded.
	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

Distribution of subject types

This table shows the distribution of awards per subject type, compared to the popularity of images of that subject type.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

Distribution of data sources

This table shows the distribution of awards per data source, compared to the popularity of images acquired from that data source.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
Promotions by Submitters When 3 distinct Submitters promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for Top Pick status. This requirement, in addition to anonymization of images and distribution to only a subset of them, prevents biases and ensures that the best images are selected.
Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

Status	Basic success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	9270656
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
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Bode's Galaxy - M81

Bode's Galaxy - M81

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