Two Galaxies Partnered Up
JonaBeth Russell
Registered Users Posts: 1,065 Major grins
A few weeks ago, we had a clear enough night to chase some deep sky objects. Managed to grab an image with two galaxies, relatively 'near' one another (at least in our sky).
These are Bode's Galaxy (M81), and Cigar Galaxy (M82). Bode's is a spiral galaxy, with a diameter about half that of the Milky Way (approx 90,000 light years). Cigar is a starburst galaxy, with an incredible luminance (brightness). It's luminance is roughly 5 times greater than that of the Milky Way, and it's center is about 100 times more luminous than our own galaxy's center. Both of these galaxies are around 12 million light years away from us. To bring that into perspective, a single light year = 5.8 trillion miles. So, 12 times that to get to these galaxies. Yeah.
Anyhow, here they are!
Comments
Very nice, Jona. Good for you for knowing the names of these galaxies. These are really sharp star shots.
Link to my Smugmug site
Thanks brotha! I like to research targets a good bit, especially after I can acquire the target through the lens. It's tough sometimes even finding these objects!
For tracking, I use a Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer. It's relatively small, but holds a decent amount of weight. Because I'm shooting a mirrorless setup, I'm able to counterbalance the rig to absolute neutral, limiting any dynamic load shifts from rotations of the assembly. This helps with keeping the stars nice & tight in the frame. The frames used for this image were shot at 65sec. Anything more at this focal length, and the stars get weird. An auto-guide would assist tremendously, but they're pretty costly, times are weird right now, and I'm not monetizing any of this just yet, so I gotta chill on toy spending for now.