Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Ursa Major (UMa)  ·  Contains:  Bode's Galaxy  ·  M 81  ·  NGC 3031
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M81, Bode's Nebula, Shannon Calvert
M81, Bode's Nebula
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M81, Bode's Nebula

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
M81, Bode's Nebula, Shannon Calvert
M81, Bode's Nebula
Powered byPixInsight

M81, Bode's Nebula

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Description

A very rare clear night with steady seeing called for an early start at the observatory, and I JUST missed the thin crescent moon by seconds as it ducked below the trees the instant I had my camera ready. I spent the next hour bouncing around to various targets that were either too high for our dome shutter or too close to the meridian to bother. M81 was in a great spot, though, and I figured I could add more data to last year's version rather than staying late since I was exhausted and still had business work to do. Unfortunately, last year's shot didn't include flats or my usual number of darks. Some of the stars were stretched or bloated, too. However, pruning those down to the 51 best frames and adding them to the new set worked better than I expected.

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M81, Bode's Nebula, Shannon Calvert