Canon 30D Unmodified
29x180sec at 1600 iso.
30 Darks/Flats/Bias
Orion ED80


M81, M82 in Ursa Major. Note Holmberg IX, M81's dwarf galaxy companion as the faint cloud just above and left of M81.

Messier 81 at a distance of 12 million light years from earth is the largest galaxy in the M81 group, a group of 34 galaxies located in the constellation Ursa Major. This is one of the closest groups to the Local Group, which contains the Milky Way.

M82 is the brightest infrared galaxy in the sky which is most likely due to its gravitational disruption from it's interaction with M81. Recently over 100 freshly-formed globular clusters have been discovered with the Hubble Space Telescope. Their formation is probably another effect triggered by the encounter with M81. It was estimated that the most recent tidal encounter with M81 occurred between about 50 and several 100 million years ago

4-19-2007