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M82. The Cigar Galaxy

The prototype of the starburst galaxies.

 

Discovered by Johann Elert Bode in 1774, M82 is located approximately 12 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Ursa Major.

 

With an apparent dimension of 9x4 arc min and visual brightness of 8.4 mag It can easily be observed with a small telescope less than one degree apart from its close -and disturbing- companion Galaxy M81.

 

Narrow band and broadband data from NOAO Survey Programs 2012B-0201 and 2014B-0176 were combined to create this portrait.

 

In the original light frames, the field sourrounding the bright star adjacent to the galaxy was affected by a big streaking artifact due to satturated pixels in the CCD. I arbitrarily cloned this area to my own taste with nearby pixels.

 

Astrometry.net

Job 5544271:

Center (RA, Dec):(148.951, 69.686)

Center (RA, hms):09h 55m 48.352s

Center (Dec, dms):+69° 41' 08.453"

Size:15.3 x 8.67 arcmin

Radius:0.147 deg

Pixel scale:0.249 arcsec/pixel

Orientation:Up is 0.271 degrees E of N

 

 

 

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Uploaded on August 6, 2021