M81 and M82 Galaxies

M81 and M82 Galaxies in Ursa Major

Technical Details Telescope: FSQ-106 Mount: MI-250 Camera: SBIG ST-10XME Filters: Astrodon LRGB Dates: LRGB March 2-5, 2008 Exposure: Lum=32x5min (160mins), RGB=(30,27,22)x5min each for 555 minutes (9.25hrs) total at -25C Notes: M82 at the lower left is an irregular galaxy that has violent star forming regions, and colliding gas clouds coming out of the center of the galaxy.  M81 (Bode's Galaxy) is the nice spiral galaxy near the center of the image.  These galaxies are about 12 million light years away.  NGC3077 is the small galaxy at the lower right.  These three galaxies are strongly interacting gravitationally.  Several other smaller galaxies are visible in the image, such as PGC28225, PGC28848, PGC3086325, PGC2730975, PGC2732102, PGC2732338, PGC2730379, PGC2730709, PGC28848, PGC2728713, PGC2727315, PGC2726822, PGC2725421, PGC2721118, PGC28614, PGC28731, PGC2724146.  There were a few more than this that I spotted so more than 20 galaxies in this image.  These galaxies are part of the M81 group,  one of the closest groups of galaxies to our own Local Group (which includes the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy).