M81 is a large spiral galaxy located in Ursa Major. It makes a nice visual/photographic pairing with M82. Both galaxies are around 12 million light years away. M81 (also known as Bode's nebula after Johann Bode, who discovered the galaxy in 1774. The galaxy is larger than the Milky Way and boasts an active supermassive black hole consisting of over 70 millioin solar masses - 15 times that of our home galaxy.

A faint irregular dwarf galaxy known as Holmberg IX is visible to the lower right of the galaxy.

This LRGB image was acquired at the Cosmic Campground (near Alma, NM) using my Stellarview 115mm triplet and an Atik 460 CCD. The camera was cooler to -10C; 10-minute subs were acquired.

Images were aligned and stacked using Nebulosity. Nebulosity was also used to synthesize the image from the LRGB stacks.

The field of view used to acquire the image is shown on the right. Clicking the image above will open up a larger (and rotated) version of image.

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