Derby and District Astronomical Society
Messier 81 (NGC 3031)
Spiral Galaxy in Ursa Major RA 09h 55m 36s Dec +69d 04m 00s
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The bright Sb type spiral galaxy M81 (NGC 3031) lies to the left of this image by Adrian Brown, which also shows
the irregular galaxy M82 (NGC 3034) to the right. M81's faint satellite galaxy Holmberg IX is visible above M81 itself. Adrian photographed these galaxies with his Skywatcher 80ED refractor and an ATK16HR
camera. The data was collected on the evenings of the 1st and 4th March 2006 and consists of 1.5 hours luminance (5 minute sub exposures)
and 30 minutes (3 minute sub exposures) each through RGB filters. The digital development process (DDP) filter in Maxim DL was used to bring
out detail in the galaxy cores and this detail was then sharpened via the application of a high-pass filter in Adobe Photoshop.
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Chris Newsome and Adrian Brown produced this image of M81 on the 19th February 2006. They used a Canon EOS300D
camera at 400 ASA through Adrian's Celestron C11 fitted with a f/6.3 focal reducer. This setup employed a CGE mount and was guided using
Guidedog software and focusing was performed using DSLRFocus. An Astronomik CLS filter was also used to remove sodium light. Five
images were taken at 210 seconds exposure and calibrated in Maxim DL. The resulting image was processed in CS2 using RGB levels, curves,
GradientXTerminator and a highpass filter. Chris comments: "This object definitely warrants attention for imaging as this first attempt
shows some lovely structure in the spiral arms. Due to vignetting with the setup, however, some of the arms are not as visible as the
others".
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