M82

"The Cigar Galaxy"

Constellation- Ursa Major

Right Ascension: 09h 56m 17s

Declination: +69° 39' 31"

Distance: 12, 000,000 light years

Visual Brightness: 8.4 mag

Apparent Dimension: 8.4 x 3.4 arc minutes

Image information-

Date taken- February 1, 2005

Telescope/Focal length/Camera/Temperature- NexStar11 GPS @ f/6.8, ST-8XE NABG @ -25C, autoguided with CCDSoft Ver. 5.0

Integrations- LRGB, L = 6 x 600 seconds binned 1x1, RGB = 6 x 600 seconds each binned 2x2

Processing- Flats and darks in CCDsoft Ver 5.0, aligned, DDP applied in Images Plus, color combined in Astroart 2.0,

Levels and curves, unsharp mask in Photoshop CS