M81 & M82

Here is a quick stack of my first shots of M81, Bode's Galaxy, and M82, the Cigar Galaxy in Ursa Major. M82, on the left, is a bit blown-out in appearance, since I was trying to bring out the spiral arms in M81. With more subs added, these two can show a great deal more detail; they're pretty large in appearance compared to most galaxies, and pretty bright. M82 is also blazing...this image from Hubble shows a huge amount of energy in near-infrared, but the actual infrared (heat) pictures from the Spitzer telescope are astonishing. This is one hot place right now! The x-ray images from Chandra are also pretty remarkable. By the way, in the Spitzer image, the vast clouds of red gas are made of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon. People in large cities know the stuff well-they called it smog. Since all of that heat is in the infrared range, it is not visible to our eyes-or my camera, which (not surprisingly) is designed to only show stuff we can see ourselves.

These two galaxies are inextricably linked-M82 is responsible for the formation of the spiral arms in M81, while M81 has caused the massive amounts of star formation in M82. Eventually, the two will merge into one galaxy.

I'll post better pics of both soon, once I can edit the picture for each individual galaxy. But really, I can't wait for a night of good dry still air to shoot these two again...it was supposed to be stormy tonight, and while it was clear, it was very turbulent; hence the big fat stars. Lots of room for improvement here, even at my current skill level, but I'm still proud of the shot-M81 is such a pretty galaxy, and this is the nicest picture of a spiral that I have taken so far, I think.