M81

Object: Messier 81 (NGC 3031)
Type: Galaxy
Distance: 4.5 million light years
Constellation: Ursa Major
Date: 01 April 2006
Equipment: SXV-H9, Vixen 114mm f5.3 ED refractor
Subframes: 50 x 80 second (unguided), 16 darks, 16 flats/flat darks, calibrated and stacked in AIP4Win.

This came out OK, despite some star trailing due to poor polar alignment. The low noise in the final image allowed me to get away with using a deconvolution filter in AstroArt 4 to round up the star images and sharpen the whole thing up to an acceptable standard.

I had planned to take a second series of images just north of the field shown here to catch M82 as well, the plan being to mosaic the two outputs together. Needless to say, the clouds rolled in just as I was framing M82.

One for another evening, then. According to my calculations, the field of view available with the 600mm focal length refractor/SXV-H9 combination should just be able to fit M81 and M82 on the same frame, so I'll be trying that next spring.