M81 and M82 (Bode's Galaxy and Cigar Galaxy)

  M81 and M82, Bode's Galaxy and the Cigar Galaxy, lie in constellation Ursa Major 12 million
light years away. They were discovered by Johann Elert Bode in 1774 who cited them as
"nebulous patches". (The original name was "Bode's Nebula"). Later, Pierre Mechain
independently rediscovered both galaxies and reported them to Charles Messier in 1779.
A close encounter took place between the two galaxies a few hundred million years ago and
the two are currently interacting gravitationally.  M81 is a bright spiral galaxy with total mass
greater than our own Milky Way. M82 is an edge-on galaxy which is 130,000 lyrs from M81 with
deformities caused by its interaction with M81.



   M81 and M82 were photographed at a darksite requiring 90 minutes to obtain a fully saturated
image. The galaxy pair were captured with a wide-view setup, focal length of about 400mm, while
individul photos of the two used a greater zoom, or focal length, of about 1000mm (1 Meter).

{  Photo:  R Lang & Associates }