M82 the Cigar Starburst Galaxy in Ursa Major

M82 or the Cigar galaxy, shines brightly at infrared wavelengths and is remarkable for its star formation activity. The Cigar galaxy experiences gravitational interactions with its neighbouring galaxy, M81, causing it to have an extraordinarily high rate of star formation — a starburst.

 

M82 is about 12 million light years away in the constellation Ursa Major. It is five times brighter than the whole Milky Way and one hundred times brighter than our galaxy's centre.

 

I took this last night over about two and a half hours using a filter to block out UV and Infrared light so it only captures visible light. I will try again soon with a different filter to see if it can bring out the star creation areas in the centre.

 

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Telescope: Celestron C11-A XLT Schmidt Cassegrain OTA

Mount: SkyWatcher EQ6-R Pro

 

Controller: ZWO ASIAIR Plus 256G

Main Camera: ZWO ASI533MC Pro at -10C

Filter: ZWO IR Cut filter

Focuser: ZWO EAF

Guide Camera: ZWO ASI174MM Mini guidecam

Guide via: ZWO OAG

 

Stacked from:

Lights 71 at 120 seconds, gain 101, temp -10C

Darks 30 at 120 seconds, gain 101, temp -10C

Flats 30 at 1.08 seconds, gain 101, temp -10C

Dark Flats 30 at 1.08 seconds gain 101 temp -10C

 

Bortle 4 sky.

Integrated the saved frames in Astro Pixel Processor.

Processed in PixInsight

Added captions in Photoshop CS4

Done