M81 Group in LRGBHa (Jeff Ridder)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Ursa Major (UMa) · Contains: Bode's Galaxy · Cigar Galaxy · M 81 · M 82 · NGC 3031 · NGC 3034 · NGC 3077

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M81 Group in LRGBHa

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M81 Group in LRGBHa

Took a crack at M81 and friends this week. A tad undersampled -- will do again someday with galaxy rig, but I kind of like these widefield shots. Spent the time to capture some H-alpha which brought out some detail in the "red pearls" of the arms and the hydrogen exchanges between the members of this group. Note the red filaments on M82 next door. The widefield image also captures NGC3077 and NGC2976. Several other galaxies here. Some irregular shapes that I couldn't determine whether they were artifacts I needed to fix or real. The annotation tool in PixInsight shows they are real, and very interesting.

From the Wikipedia page on this group: Messier 81, Messier 82, and NGC 3077 are all strongly interacting with each other. Observations of the 21-centimeter hydrogen line indicate how the galaxies are connected. The gravitational interactions have stripped some hydrogen gas away from all three galaxies, leading to the formation of filamentary gas structures within the group. Bridges of neutral hydrogen have been shown to connect M81 with M82 and NGC 3077. Moreover, the interactions have also caused some interstellar gas to fall into the centers of Messier 82 and NGC 3077, which has led to strong starburst activity (or the formation of many stars) within the centers of these two galaxies.

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	4156656
PixInsight job	DXTFVXA39VV44TLIPVG6RL3NMHNYGA0F
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

RA (center)	09h57m57s.36
RA (top/left)	10h04m36s.55
RA (top/right)	10h06m03s.40
RA (bottom/right)	09h50m44s.72
RA (bottom/left)	09h50m23s.88

Dec (center)	+69°18′58″.5
Dec (top/left)	+68°26′47″.0
Dec (top/right)	+70°06′02″.4
Dec (bottom/right)	+70°10′01″.6
Dec (bottom/left)	+68°30′22″.9

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M81 Group in LRGBHa

M81 Group in LRGBHa

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M81 Group in LRGBHa

M81 Group in LRGBHa

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