Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Ursa Major (UMa)  ·  Contains:  Bode's Galaxy  ·  Cigar Galaxy  ·  HD85161  ·  HD85458  ·  HD86574  ·  M 81  ·  M 82  ·  NGC 3031  ·  NGC 3034  ·  NGC 3077
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M81 Group, Ani Shastry
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M81 Group

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
M81 Group, Ani Shastry
Powered byPixInsight

M81 Group

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Description

I captured this using a Dream Aerospace Systems Dreamscope 16" Newtonian at f/3.75, and an aging FLI PL 16803 CCD camera. L, R, G, B and Hydrogen-Alpha filters were used with a total of ~17 hours of data spread across 6 nights. I could have easily used 2x the data to bring out additional details in the wispy galactic dust, but I unfortunately no longer had access to this system, so I had to revert to significant processing to keep the noise at bay while stretching the data.

The M81 group of galaxies spans across the constellations Ursa Major (Big Dipper) and Camelopardalis as seen from the Earth, and includes M81 (Bode's Galaxy), M82 (Cigar Galaxy), and several others. The center of the group is approximately 11.5 million light years away from the Earth, and is estimated to have ~1.03 trillion solar masses! See if you can zoom into the picture and find all the tiny galaxies visible in the frame, it's like playing Where's Waldo!

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M81 Group, Ani Shastry