M82 the Cigar galaxy

[broca]

This has been a terrible winter here in the south eastern U.S.  This is a composite image of M82...

M82, with supernova SN 2014J, the Cigar galaxy in Ursa Major is 11.8 million light years from Earth.

The galaxy center of M82 is active with high rate of star formation caused by the gravitational effect from nearby spiral galaxy, M81.

This is a composite image taken from two different telescopes and two different cameras. The color is from a Canon T1i that was collected in 2011. The QSI 683wsg-8 was used to collect Luminance and Hydrogen-alpha data.

RGB data: 360 second exposures stacked in DeepSkyStacker and processed in Photoshop for a total integration time of 6 hours and 26 minutes.

Luminance data: 360 second exposures totaling 2.2 hours of integration using QSI 683wsg-8.

Hydrogen-alpha data: 20 minute exposures totaling 2 hours and 40 minutes of integration using the QSI CCD camera

Astro-Tech 6" Richey-Chretien (RGB)

Astro-Tech 8" Richey-Chretien (Luminance)

Celestron CG-5 German equatorial mount (2011)

Losmandy G11 with Gemini 2 (2014)

[todd8137]

That's one of the best I have seen in a while great streams coming out as well color is spot on not the false blues greens and bright pinks

Brill image

Pat

[sologuitarist61]

Great detail in that image - well done!