Enchanted Skies
Widefield

NGC 4725 Region (imaged near Fort Davis, Texas)
M81 & M82 Where to find M81 & M82

 

Object Information                                            Imaging Details

Galaxies M81 and M82 make a striking pairing high in the northern sky during the Spring. M81 is a bright spiral galaxy, appearing nearly face-on, while M82 (aka the Cigar Galaxy) is an irregular 'starburst' galaxy. Both are in Ursa Major.

I wanted to see how deep I could image M81/M82 using my Stellarview 115 triplet and a DSLR camera cooler. In particular, I wanted to see how well I could capture the Ha light coming from M82. So I did took several hours of Ha data as well as color data of the pair.

Clicking the above image will bring up a higher resolution image with a wider field of view. The linked image is shown about 25% of original size.

Telescope:

Stellarvue 115 fluorite triplet
Camera:
 Canon T2i (type 1 modified)
Filter(s):
 Astronomik EOS clip-in 12nm Ha filter.
Misc. Optics:
  
Exposures:

Color: 23 x 300 seconds @ iso 800.
Ha: 22 x 10-minutes @ iso 1600
Guiding:
 With ED80 (side-by-side on G11 mount)
Processing:
 Images converted to tifs using Photoshop CS5. Nebulosity used to stack the images. Ha data combined with color data. Additional processing (curves, sharpening) with PS CS5.

Home           Galleries          Galaxies

Enchanted Skies - Astrophotography by Rich Richins (all images copyright, Rich Richins)