Bode's Galaxy - Blog Posts

Photo a few galaxies, M81 / bode's galaxy (centre), M82/the cigar galaxy (left) and NGC 3077 (right)

In addition to those three galaxies, there are many other (much) smaller ones hidden among the stars (a few examples):

The red-ish filament visible around M82 are ionised hydrogen gas and dust pushed outwards by galactic-superwind

Those are tough to be a combination of solar winds created by young stars and the shockwaves of frequent supernovas. They mostly occur in starburst galaxy a type of galaxies that experience heightened stars formation generally due to recent gravitational interaction with other galaxies, in the case of M82 the trigger is most likely its neighbour M81.

(Image taken using a CarbonStar 150/600 newtonian telescope with a 0.95 coma corrector, ZWO ASI294 monochrome camera ZWO LRGB filters and Baader 6.5nm Ha filter. 12x180s image for each colour filter (RGB), 6x300s for the Ha filter, total imaging time 2h 54min, stacking and processing done in PixInsight.)