Bodes Nebula and the Cigar Galaxy

Colorado CJ

Colorado CJ

Well-Known Member
It was finally clear last night, so I shot a pair of galaxies.

M81 (Bodes Nebula) is 12 Million light years away and spans around 90,000 light years across.

M82 (the Cigar Galaxy) is 12 Million light years away. It is a Starburst galaxy and makes stars 10X faster than our galaxy. The bright core is exploding with Hydrogen gas (the red areas in the center).

I decided to see how my mono camera with filter wheel works with the RASA 11. I was wondering if the large filter wheel would affect the image too much or not.

It looks like it will work fine with the filter wheel and also with my normal filters. So I won't have to buy the expensive 2" "fast" filters for this scope. Some of the stars are very slightly out of round, but I think I can fix that with making a mask to sit in front of the filter wheel.

Anyway, here is the photo. This is an integration of:

Lum: 200, 20 second images
Red: 48, 45 second images
Green: 48, 45 second images
Blue: 48, 45 second images
H-Alpha: 40, 90 second images

Celestron RASA 11
ZWO ASI183MM Pro
EQ6-R Pro
ZWO ASI290MM MIni Guide Camera



M81-RASA-Mono-Small by Colo CJ, on Flickr
 
Ben Egbert

Ben Egbert

Forum Helper
Staff member
Boy the Bodes galaxy is a classic spiral and it;s easy to see why the other is named the cigar galaxy. Great images as always.
 
JimFox

JimFox

Moderator
Staff member
Super cool detail Andrew! It’s sweet getting both in the same image. I hope to get back out and shoot some Astro on Tues or Wed.
 
Mike Lewis

Mike Lewis

Staff Member
Great stuff - really impressive how that RASA sucks in the photons! Love the details and the H-a is really popping out in both galaxies. I am surprised the central obstruction penalty of the camera and filter wheel did not do more to your contrast, but this result certainly does not make that seem to be an issue.

Great result!

ML
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom