Among the best known galaxy pairing in the sky are M81 & M82 located in the northern constellation, Ursa Major. These two are particularly photogenic. M81 being a beautiful spiral galaxy while M82 is categorized as an “irregular galaxy”. Looking at the accompanying image of M82, its easy to see what it was categorized that way. First up, it doesn’t display any of the classic galaxy shapes. Not really a spiral galaxy, not really an elliptical galaxy, it hardly even looks like a galaxy at all… more of an anomaly. As you look at the galaxy, the first thing that catches your eye is the distinctive mottling through the center. There certainly seems to be a whole bunch going on in there…

Ok, so the post is galaxy pairs… what happened to the other member of the pair, M81? Well, while processing the image, the right half of the image which contained M82 suffered a number of aberations. I was too tired to fix these while trying to get a post written. Plus, I really liked the way that M82 turned out all by itself. So, I brought the image into Photo Shop and copied M82 out into its own file. I’ll get the image properly processed and added to another post at some point

This image was created from 12 images capture on the night of 11/3/07. This was a pretty nice night. 665 on the clear sky clock. Perfectly clear, Perfectly transparent skies, very steady skies.

Astro Photo Details:

* Designation: M82
* Type: Irregular Galaxy
* Constellation: Ursa Major
* Magnitude: 8.4
* Size: 8′x 3′

Astro Photo Processing Details

* 12 x 60s exposures at ISO400
* Stacked using RegiStax 4
* Photo Shop Levels
* Neat Image

I caught a beautiful crescent moon rising this morning. Skies were clear (as they’ve been for a number of days recently) and I had to get up early. I quickly checked out the planets Venus & Mercury and then aimed the scope towards the moon. The moon had not yet risen yet, so I went a got a quick refresh of my coffee.

I caught the moon rising through the trees lining the ridge to the southeast. As it rose above the obstructions, I could see a wonderful example of Earthshine. Earthshine is the illumination of the dark side of the moon with light reflecting off of the Earth’s surface. It’s quite spectacular if you’ve not noticed it before.

I have two images for you today. Both were created from the same original images. Only the post processing is different. The images were (1) 1/8 second exposure at ISO100. This was intended to capture the illuminated portion of the moon. (2) was an 8 second exposure also at ISO100. This was intended to pull out a bunch of detail in the Earthshine portion of the moon.

The first, posted to the left was created using RegiStax to combine the two images. It seems to show more detail in the Earthshine portion of the moon. The second, is a little darker, but shows more detail in the illuminated portion of the moon. Which do you think is better? I was hoping to more effectively combine the best elements of the two, but was left with a couple of compromise shots because of my limited skills in image processing. This WILL be remedied as I proceed in this endeavor.