M81

M81
George Moromisato
24 January 2005

Meade 8" SN LXD75
Meade Deep Sky Imager (no IR filter)

200 x 30 second exposures
192 x 42.4 second exposures
235 total minutes exposure

18 through 21 January 2005
Cambridge, MA

M81

M81
Ursa Major 9H 55m  69° 4'
Magnitude: 6.8
Size: 21' x 10'
Distance: 11 million light-years

Source: SEDS

See Also
M81 and M82
M81 (earlier version)

Capture

This is a combination of two different capturing runs. The first was a single DSI frame centered on the galaxy core and reaching out to the edge of the galaxy. The second was a mosaic of two images that covered more of the sky around M81.

Processing

The biggest problem I had was matching up the different images to generate a seamless composite. In the end I had to resort to manual Photoshop methods to mask out different background areas and alter them to match the other images.
Copyright © 1999-2013 by George Moromisato. All Rights Reserved.