Canon 350D Hap Griffin Baader Mod
55x180sec at iso 1600
30 Darks/Flats/Bias
Celestron 9.25 reduced 0.63

50% Crop

Astronomy Magazine Picture of the Day January 23, 2009

Messier 82 (NGC 3034) is a galaxy of peculiar type in the galaxy-rich constellation Ursa Major. It is usually classified as irregular, though probably a distorted disk galaxy. It is the prototypical "starburst galaxy" as it is very active in star forming, probably due to the energizing influence of a recent close (in galactic terms on both counts - the most recent being 50 to several 100 million years ago) encounter it's neighbor M81. M82 forms stars at the rate of 10 times that of a normal galaxy.

Also due to this close encounter, M82 is the brightest infrared emitting galaxy in the sky, and recently over 100 young globular clusters were recently discovered there by the Hubble Space Telescope.

M82 is 12 million light years distant and spans 40,000 light years.

October 30, 2008