Messier 81

Messier 81 is one of the brightest galaxies in the night sky. It is located 11.6 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Ursa Major and has an apparent magnitude of 6.9. (NASA Science)

The galaxy’s central bulge contains much older, redder stars. It is significantly larger than the Milky Way’s bulge. A black hole of 70 million solar masses resides at the center of M81 and is about 15 times the mass of the Milky Way’s central black hole. Previous Hubble research showed that the size of the black hole in a galaxy’s nucleus is proportional to the mass of the galaxy’s bulge. (NASA Science)

Image processed by Andrew F. Macica, original data from Telescope Live.

Imaging Details:

Observatory: Oria, Spain

Telescope: Officina Stellare 700 RC

Aperture: 700 mm (27.5 inches), f/8

Focal Length: 5600 mm

Camera: FLI ProLine PL16803 CCD

Filters: Ha, LRGB

Total Exposure: 6 hours 40 min.

Image Processing:

PixInsight 1.8.9-3 Ripley (x64);

BlurXTerminator, NoiseXTerminator (RC Astro);

Adobe Photoshop 25.12.4;

Adobe Lightroom Classic 15.0.1

Instruction on PixInsight from Adam Block Studios.