"These two galaxies are far far away, 12 million light-years distant toward the northern constellation of the Great Bear. On the left, with grand spiral arms and bright yellow core is spiral galaxy M81, some 100,000 light-years across. On the right marked by red gas and dust clouds, is irregular galaxy M82.
Gravity from each galaxy has profoundly affected the other during a series of cosmic close encounters..., their continuing gravitational encounters will result in a merger, and a single galaxy will remain. "
https://science.nasa.gov/galaxy-wars-m81-and-m82Not much we did during May through August of 2020. With the pandemic situation we could not go out at all and the acquisition data was mostly from our backyard when the weather allowed us. In those times I order a bit of the previous data and begin to work in this DSO and other two.
Having a look now after almost two years, several sessions suffer from moonlight condition plus fog in the ambience (as Mauri named 'fog' the folder). Even using filters could not avoid such a situation which is not good at all. If it were today I would not take into account those sessions for stack.
These several night sessions were done in an unusual way. I did several stacks by filter first then by session night, then assembled each output in a final blend image in Photoshop. I'm not working like this now, I use a different way.
I remember that M 82 fascinated me the most, even the galaxy looks gorgeous, but the Cigar Galaxy is unique in those expelled red filaments of dust exited....Shame that our data could not catch it in more fine detail. This is one of the several tries, but I hope in the future we can get back and do better work on these two fascinating DSO.
Processed Sept. 2020
https://twitter.com/AstroOtus/status/1466731266301218818
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