Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Ursa Major (UMa)  ·  Contains:  Bode's Galaxy  ·  Cigar Galaxy  ·  M 81  ·  M 82  ·  NGC 3031  ·  NGC 3034
Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
M81 M82 Bodes Nebula and Cigar Galaxy, Edward Overstreet
Powered byPixInsight

M81 M82 Bodes Nebula and Cigar Galaxy

Link to TIFF/FITS: http://www.nghtskyimager.com
Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
M81 M82 Bodes Nebula and Cigar Galaxy, Edward Overstreet
Powered byPixInsight

M81 M82 Bodes Nebula and Cigar Galaxy

Link to TIFF/FITS: http://www.nghtskyimager.com

Equipment

Loading...

Acquisition details

Loading...

Description

Messier 81 (NGC 3031) in Ursa Major is one of the most conspicuous spiral galaxies in the sky. It forms a physical pair with its neighbor, M 82, and is the dominant galaxy of the M81 group.   
M 81 is probably about 12 million years away, as determined by Hubble Space Telescope observations of Cepheid variables within it. The true diameter of M 81 is at least 70,000 light years; its mass has been calculated to be around 250 billion suns. This makes it somewhat heavier than our Milky Way. The absolute magnitude of M 81 is -20.8, a luminosity of 17 billion suns.M 81 is the brightest of a group of 34 galaxies called the Messier 81 Galaxy Group. The distance to the center of the cluster is about 12 million light years. It is the second nearest galaxy group to our Local Group (after the Sculptor Galaxy Group, about 8 million light years away). The M 81 Group includes, in addition to its two Messier members, NGCs 2976 and 3077 in Ursa Major, NGCs 2366 and 2403 in Camelopardalis, and NGC 4236 in    *Sky Safari Pro 6

Comments

Sky plot

Sky plot

Histogram

M81 M82 Bodes Nebula and Cigar Galaxy, Edward Overstreet