The Cigar Nebula - Messier 82

Image Description and Details : Messier 82 is the very first galaxy I was able to observe with the naked eye with my old telescope: a C9.25 EDGE HD on a Losmandy G11 Gemini mount. This was in early January 2014, when the supernova SN 2014J was visible. It was also the first galaxy I photographed in May 2017. So it was a great pleasure to have been able to process the data of this galaxy from a much more ambitious setup.

Messier 82 (the Cigar Galaxy) is a starburst galaxy, meaning that it has an exceptional rate of star creation compared to most galaxies. It’s located approximately 12 million light-years away in the constellation of Ursa Major. About five times brighter than the Milky Way, the intense star formation activity was triggered by an interaction with the neighboring galaxy M81.

OPTICS Planewave CDK17 @ F/6.8
CAMERA FLI Proline 16803
MOUNT Paramount ME
FILTERS Ha, L, R, G, B
LOCATION Dark Sky New Mexico, Animas, New Mexico, USA
DATE January 2022 & 2017
EXPOSURES 46 hours (L 58 x 1200 sec, R 28 x 900 sec, G 27 x 900 sec, B 28 x 900 sec, Ha 12 x 1800 sec)
PROCESSING SOFTWARE Pixinsight, CCDstack, Photoshop

Copyright: Data acquisition: Bernard MILLER
Processing: Nicolas ROLLAND