Messier 82 (also known as NGC 3034, Cigar Galaxy or M82) is a starburst galaxy approximately 12 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major. It is a must-have for astrophotographers. In this picture, we wanted to detail the super clusters located in the core of this galaxy and the large Ha extensions. To reach this goal, we used two techniques:
– 4h of lucky imaging with a Newton customized Orion 14″ and ASI290MM Pro (35 000 x 200 ms and 7500 x 1s) combined with 10h of Luminance obtained with a Newton 10” (Axis Instrument and ZWO ASI2600MM)
– 44h40 of Ha exposures coming from the Newton 10”
The data has been mixed as usual with Photoshop.
As a result, the core shows the massive giant clusters which are well separated, and the long exposure data shows all the Ha extensions. It was not easy to deal with the different scales and resolution from the 2 scopes.
Technical details:
Lucky imaging: 35 000 x 200 ms and 7500 x 1s – Newton customized Orion 14″ and ASI290MM Pro on EQ8
Long exposures: Ha : 268×10 min (44h40) / L : 200x3min (10h) / R : 48x3min / G : 43 x 3min / B: 54x3min – Total : 65h 56min 40s
Telescope Newton 250 f/4 Axis instruments / Corrector Televue Paracorr 2 / Filters: Antlia V-pro 36mm / Camera: ZWO ASI2600MM Pro/ Mount: AP1100 / Location : Dark Sky Alqueva, Portugal – From January 24th to February 28th
Softwares : Nina / APP / Siril / Photoshop