M81 and NGC 3077

M81

Messier 81, also known as NGC 3031 or Bode's Galaxy, is a grand design spiral galaxy approximately 12 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major. It has a D25 isophotal diameter of 29.44 kiloparsecs (about 96,000 light-years). Nearby, NGC 3077, a small disrupted elliptical galaxy, is also a member of the M81 Group.

M81 - Cropped Views

I have recently moved to PixInsight. So quite a steep learning curve. This is a highly cropped version of the wide field view using the tools available in PixInsight.

M81 - Annotated Image

M81 - Wide field

Technical DetailsObject: M81Location: Portsmouth, UKMount: SW Alt Az EQBortle Scale: 7Scope: Redcat 51mmCamera ZWO 2600 Colour (-10) with broadband filterNights: 16th March 2025Total Subs Used: 83 x 120Secs. Rotation: 128.5Seeing: GoodFits Stacked: Astro Pixel Processor
Post-Processing Steps

Astro Pixel Processor, GraXpert - Background extraction and Denoise.

2. Siril - colour calibration, photometric colour calibration, removing green noise, colour calibration, histogram stretch, colour saturation.

M81 and NGC 3077

Seeing conditions were not particularly great, with high clouds and bright skies. It's not getting dark until 22:00. Taken over a number of nights from 05-07 May 2024, with a total of 361 x 10 sec subs. It was stacked in Siril and processed in GraXpert, which I'm just starting to play with. Unfortunately I couldn't line up M82, which is one of the restrictions of the Seestar.

Object: M81 and NGC 3077

Location: Portsmouth, UK

Mount: Alt Az

Bortle Scale: 7

Total Session Time: 120

Nights: 05th - 7th May 2024

Total Subs Used: 363 x 10 Subs

Seeing: Clear

Fits Stacked: Siril

Post-Processing Steps

1. GraXpert - Background extraction and Denoise v2.0

2. Siril - color calibration, photometric color calibration,remove green noise, color calibration, histogram stretch, colour saturation.

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