Tuesday, February 13, 2007

M81 & M82, Bode's Galaxy & Cigar Galaxy



Description from Starry Night Pro:
M81 and M82 are perhaps the most famous pair of galaxies in the sky and both can be seen in the same low magnification field of view. Both are spiral galaxies but M81 is nearly face on, while M82 is edge on. The contrast offered by these two galaxies is one of the visual delights of the night sky. M81 and M82 are separated by only 150 000 light years. Tens of millions of years ago, the larger (and ten times as massive) M81 passed close by its smaller neighbour, inducing a round of starburst formation in M82. It also led to the birth of over 100 globular clusters, and disrupted the appearance of M82, so much that it is sometimes classed as an irregular galaxy instead of a spiral galaxy. While quite faint in visible light, M82 is the brightest galaxy in the sky in the infrared region.


30 x 30 sec unguided with the Rebel XT @ ISO 800 through the ST80, riding piggyback on the LX200. Processed with Nebulosity. It's pretty noisy--I could have used many more exposures.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Way to go buddy! How did you get them to look so large? Is there an enlargement technique or stretching? Mine image of these two taken on Wednesday looks so tiny (and I also did 30 x 30 second exposures). :)

Best Always,

Daniel

imjeffp said...

They're big because that's the center 800 pixels of the 3000 from the camera.

Fun shooting so close to the pole, isn't it? =)

Anonymous said...

LOL! Yeah I just learned how to crop this weekend. You are so lucky to be a graphic artist! :)