Back to Bode’s
Here’s my latest image of M81 and M82, Bode’s Galaxy and the Cigar Galaxy, respectively – together they are sometimes called “Bode’s Galaxies.”
I’ve imaged these many times over the years; in fact M81 was one of the very first deep sky objects I attempted to photograph like 10 years ago.
I’m happy with this year’s take on it! Now that I’m imaging under darker skies of central Texas, I can finally bring out the “IFN” – Integrated Flux Nebula. This is gas just outside of our own galaxy, illuminated by the collective starlight of the Milky Way! As you can imagine, it’s very dim, and wasn’t even discovered until around 2003. There’s a lot of IFN in this part of the sky; it’s the gray wispy stuff in the background.
I also integrated some Hydrogen-alpha data into this image, which made the red Hydrogen areas pop a little more. That includes the huge jets spewing out of the Cigar Galaxy, as well as star-forming HII regions in Bode’s Galaxy. This was my first time using the “continuum subtraction” technique to make the Hydrogen-alpha integration more precise.
Here’s the pretty cropped version:
And, the original wider field, showing more of the IFN:
