A Cosmic Mess - 80 hours of M81 and M82

Image Description and Details :

This 80-hour image shows a deep look into the area of the two galaxies M81 and M82 and surroundings. The well known Integrated Flux Nebula shows a lot of detail Arp's loop is clearly defined. Another very interesting part were the H-Alpha observations. Nothing new, really, but rarely shown in a field this wide. For one the "Cap of M82". Its a small area of glowing hydrogen next to M82, likely associated with the Starburst.

The small galaxy Holmberg IX also showed a lot of hydrogen signal, that's why it almost looks purple instead of the "usual" blue.

The image was taken from January through April 2021, in 11 different nights. Roughly 2/3 of the data was acquired from a dark site, the rest in my Bortle 6 Backyard.

Image details: 80 hours total integration time
21h Luminance
8h Red
8h Green
8h Blue
35h H-Alpha

Celestron RASA8
Skywatcher EQ6
QHY 183M

Processing mainly done in PixInsight, though some in Photoshop

Copyright: Julian Shroff