It’s been a while since I imaged M81 and M82, the famous pair almost made to be photographed.
Messier 81 is the largest galaxy in the M81 Group, M82 the second largest in the group of 34 galaxies located in the constellation Ursa Major, at about 12 Mly. M81 is a spiral, M82 is a starburst galaxy, distorted by the interactions with M81. The intense star formation makes M82, though less massive, more luminous than the Milky Way. The very faint satellite of spiral, in this picture the patch at one o’clock from M81’s core, is the Holmberg IX dwarf, one of the youngest of its kind. (tovább…)





