I had clear sky to the NorthEast for a few hours, my original target was obscured by clouds, so I decided on trying to beat the on coming clouds of New Jersey.  If I had more time I would have tried for about 40 exposures vs. 20.

Amateur Observation:
With a total visual magnitude of about 6.8, M 81 can easily be found with binoculars and small telescopes. Under exceptional seeing conditions, it has even been glimpsed with the naked eye by experienced observers. M 81 appears as an elongated, diffuse 20' x 10' oval patch in small telescopes, its periphery of rather low surface brightness. With averted vision, broad, diffuse, indistinct spiral arms can be glimpsed.Telescopes with apertures of 8 inches or larger are needed to distinguish structure in the galaxy, and show a striking example of a "grand design" spiral galaxy. Near-perfect arms spiral into the core, a blazing 3' x 2' oval containing a bright 30"-diameter nucleus. To the SSE of the core, separated from it by a dark gap, is a thin spiral feature. The spiral arm NNW of the core is wider and much shorter. Wide dust lanes stretch outward to the edge of the disk.
Properties and Interaction with M 82: 
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 Draco.A few hundred million years ago, a close encounter took place between M 81 and its smaller neighbor, M 82, during which the latter was dramatically deformed. The encounter has also left traces in the spiral pattern of M 81. The galaxies are still close together - their centers separated by as little as 150,000 light-years. M 81 is still gravitationally interacting with Messier 82 and NGC 3077. The interactions have stripped some hydrogen gas away from all three galaxies, leading to the formation of filamentary gas structures in the group. 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 in the centers of these two galaxies.
Infrared Observations, Dark Matter, and Supernovae:
Because of its proximity and large size, Messier 81 is also a popular target of professional astronomers. The Spitzer Space Telescope has observed infrared emission from interstellar dust in M 81's spiral arms. This interstellar dust is associated with star formation regions, whose hot, short-lived blue stars are very effective at heating the dust. M 81 has an active galactic nucleus, which harbors a supermassive, 70-million-solar-mass black hole.In 1994, investigations indicated that M 81 contains little dark matter. For many galaxies, including our own Milky Way, the rotation rate increases outward with distance from the core. However, the total observed luminous matter - stars and nebulae - is typically insufficient to explain this behavior; thus it is assumed that a significant portion of mass in such galaxies is non-luminous, dark matter. In contrast, M 81's rotation rate was found to decline in the outer regions. Thus for M 81, the percentage of dark matter is now estimated to be lower than average.Only one supernova (SN 1993J) has been discovered in Messier 81, by F. Garcia in Spain, but reached a maximum brightness of about magnitude 10.5, and was the second-brightest supernova observed in the 20th century. In 1995, astronomers found about 70 candidate globular clusters in the region around M 81, and estimated a total population at 210 globulars.

@infomration from SkySafari