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Writer's pictureTony Brown

Bode and his Cigar

Updated: Apr 17

An awfully wet and grey winter means I have had 6 nights of imaging from Dronfield this year. At the end of March the grey weather departed for two clear nights and miraculously these two nights coincided with a moon rising after midnight. March in the UK is definitely Galaxy season as the Earth is orientated during our nights with views outside of our own Milky Way. With my current telescope there are only a handful of Galaxies that can be seen as anything other than a very small hazy blob, I think Bode (M81) is a good subject, showing enough detail to be interesting in its own right but also in the same field of view a very interesting neighbour (M82) plus other smaller (as they are more distant galaxies) I count 5 others.

The Galaxy named for its discoverer Johann Elert Bode in 1774.

Located approximately 11.8 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major, M81 or NGC 3031 stands as a grand spiral galaxy, presenting a stunning example of galactic symmetry and structure. At the heart of NGC 3031 lies a supermassive black hole with a mass 70 million times that of our sun.

At 12 million light-years from us is M82, this is in the same group of galaxies at M81, they are gravitationally linked, the tidal interactions with M81 are causing accelerated star formation, this gives this galaxy its categorisation as a Starburst galaxy. It is 5 times brighter that our own Milky Way galaxy would be at that distance.

This image is 2 nights worth of images, 160 images each one of 3 minutes in length. The equivalent exposure time of 8 hours.

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