January 29, 2020
Messier's 81 or Bode's Galaxy is located near the Big Dipper. It is fairly large, nearly
the size of a full moon. It is about 12 million light years away and half the size of our galaxy.
I've photographed it many times but have never got the detail and color that
I got this time, using the C8 telescope. This was the only object
I worked on last night and I took lots of exposure.
Just for a comparison, here's an image I took of Bode's Galaxy and the
Cigar Galaxy (M81 and M82) back in 2016, the first winter I tried astrophotography.
I was happy to get this lousy image back then, using my cheap tracking mount and
the 500 f4 mounted on it. I was hooked on this challenging hobby already!