Galaxy M81 and M82

 

 

 
Telescope Mount Exposure Film Date
Takahashi FS102 at F6 Losmandy G11 70 minutes Non hypered Kodak PPF April 2000
 
M81 and M82 are the first galaxies I ever saw through a telescope. I borrowed a six inch reflector from the local astronomy club, set it up on my roof and set out to find the pair using a star chart. Forty five frustrating minutes later I found them, but boy was I psyched when I finally did. Luckily, it only takes me a few seconds to find them now. M81, the galaxy in the right of the photo, is 4.5 million light years from earth. M82 is 17 million light years away. The pair is visible through a small pair of binoculars if you can hold them steady enough. The pair is nice through small scopes, and beautiful when viewed through a large scope.

This photo was made by scanning two negatives with the Polaroid Sprintscan 4000 at 4000 dpi. Scanning at 4000 dpi seems rediculous when viewing on a monitor with a resolution of 72 dpi, but it sure allows the film grain to show up nicely. The scans were then stacked to reduce the film grain. Unfortunately, I did not capture the nice color gradients visible in other photos I have seen of this pair. I am not sure if that is because the film became damp or if the FS102 is too small to resolve such detail.