M81 a grand design spiral, lying over 11.6 million LY away and spanning 90,000 LY shows plenty of detail. The spiral arms are tinged with blue star streams and at the core lies a huge black hole with a mass of 70 million sol.
Imaged at f10 (2000mm) in my SCT, M81 begins to give up some detail in the core, with fine dust lanes, some at odd angles. Whilst my image has depth it lacks the integration to really show off the spectacular spiral arms - these remain noisy but with a hint of the blue star streams and small emissions, which are more obvious in my
recent f3 image.
I have been fortunate to benefit from rare consecutive clear night in UK, although seeing and transparency have been variable. Whilst there are many spring galaxies to image, Ursa major is at zenith and, as a result, less prone to poor seeing.
Data were collected in ATP, calibrated in Nebulosity and processed in Startools. Given the noise, and fairly wide dynamic range in M81, I have not stretched this aggressively, but rather attempted to retain the fine detail in the core. The mouseover shows a simpler processing using stretch and curves in Nebulosity (Revision B). I'dd be interested in your comments on these two versions.
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