A Galactic Pair: M81 and M82
Messier 81 (right) and Messier 82 (left) shrouded in Integrated Flux Nebula (IFN), HaLRGB
North of the constellation Ursa Major, about 12 million light years away from Earth, there lies two galaxies known as Bode’s Galaxy (M81) and The Cigar Galaxy (M82). During three nights in February, I aimed my new refractor telescope to capture this galactic pair.
Stretching approximately 90,000 light-years across, Bode’s Galaxy boasts striking spiral arms with bright clusters of young stars and swirling dust lanes. The supermassive black hole located at its center is estimated to weigh the equivalent of 70 million suns - almost 20 times more massive than the Milky Way’s central black hole, Sag A*.
Adjacent to M81, we encounter its galactic counterpart, The Cigar Galaxy. Unlike the swirling spiral structure of M81, M82 is an irregularly shaped starburst galaxy with an inferno of star formation and violent galactic winds. The two galaxies are in gravitational dance that will last billions of years. Their latest close encounter was approximately 100 million years ago, which is believed to have set off the immense amount of star formation within M82; ten times that of an average galaxy. The collision of gas in M82 is so energetic that it can be seen glowing in the x-ray spectrum (as seen by NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory) .
The bursts of energy from stars being born in M82 create winds which spew material outwards from the galaxy center. I chose to use my hydrogen alpha filter to highlight the energetic, ionized hydrogen glowing red in M82.
Billions of years from now, M81 and M82 will finally end their gravitational dance and merge to become a single galaxy.
When imaging this region, the aspiration of every astrophotographer is to capture the dust that shrouds these galaxies. This extremely faint dust is known as integrated flux nebula (IFN) and is material that is located in the foreground, looming above the plane of the Milky Way. The glow of the billions of stars within the Milky Way are illuminating this dust and the diffuse reflected light is shining back down into the lens of my telescope here on Earth.
