The M81 and M82 galaxy system...

M81 and M82

Objects: Messier 81 (NGC 3031, Bode's Galaxy) and Messier 82 (NGC 3034, the Cigar Galaxy)
Type: Galaxies (classifications M81: SA(s)sb, M82: I0 ) 
Constellation: Ursa Major
Distance: 12 million light years

Dates: 20th and 27th. February 2020
Equipment: ATIK 460EX with EFW2, Skywatcher f5.5 Esprit 100 ED refractor, Avalon Linear mount, guiding with Lodestar X2/PHD

Subframes: 12 x Red, 12 x Green, 12 x Blue, 12 x  H-alpha (all 300s, 2x2 binned), 12 x 600s luminance, plus flats for each channel but no darks (hot pixel removal in Astroart).

The M81 Group is a galaxy group in the constellations Ursa Major and Camelopardalis that includes the galaxies Messier 81 and Messier 82, as well as several other galaxies with high apparent brightnesses. The approximate centre of the group is located at a distance of 12 light years, making it one of the nearest groups to the Local Group. The M81 Group, the Local Group, and other nearby groups all lie within the Virgo Supercluster (i.e. the Local Supercluster). 

Location of M81/82 field

The location of the M81/M82 group in the night sky is indicated in the Stellarium sky map opposite.

Discovered by the German astronomer Johann Elert Bode in 1774, M81 and M82 are two of the brightest galaxies in the night sky. Through a pair of binoculars, the galaxies appear as faint patches of light in the same field of view.

M81’s galaxy’s outer spiral arms are made up of young, bluish, hot stars formed in the past few million years. They also host a population of stars formed in an episode of star formation that started about 600 million years ago. Ultraviolet light from hot, young stars is the surrounding clouds of hydrogen gas to fluoresce, giving rise to the characteristic red emission nebulae that show in the above image as tiny red speckles visible strewn along the spiral arms of the galaxy. A number of dust lanes can also be seen tracing the arms into the nucleus of M81.

The galaxy’s central bulge contains much older, redder stars. It is significantly larger than the Milky Way’s bulge. A black hole of 70 million solar masses resides at the centre of M81 and is about 15 times the mass of the Milky Way’s central black hole.

M82 (nicknamed the “Cigar galaxy”) shines brightly at infrared wavelengths and is remarkable for its star formation activity. The galaxy experiences gravitational interactions with its galactic neighbour, M81, which creates an extraordinarily high rate of star formation: for this reason M82 is known as a “starburst” galaxy.

It is about five times more luminous than our Milky Way galaxy and has a centre one hundred times more luminous. As the closest starburst galaxy to Earth, M82 is the prototypical example of this galaxy type.

Around the M81’s centre, young stars are being born at a rate 10 times faster than they are inside our entire Milky Way galaxy. Radiation and energetic particles from these newborn stars carve into the surrounding gas, and the resulting galactic wind compresses enough gas to make millions of more stars. The rapid rate of star formation in this galaxy eventually will be self-limiting. When star formation becomes too vigorous, it will consume or destroy the material needed to make more stars. The starburst will then subside, probably in a few tens of millions of years.

Background galaxies in the M81/M82 field

Other distant background galaxies can be seen in this image, all of which are hundreds of millions of light years away, with the exception of Holmberg XI, which is a small satellite galaxy of M81.  Some of these chillingly distant objects are indicated in the luminance image opposite.

The region of M81 and M82 is permeated by faint trails of dust that are part of our galaxy rather than associated with the M81 group.  These Integrated Flux Nebulae are high galactic latitude nebulae that are illuminated not by a single star (as most nebulae in the plane of the Galaxy are) but by the energy from the combined light (“integrated flux”) of all the stars in our Milky Way. These IFN are very faint and were only discovered in 2005 by amateur astronomer Steve Mandel.

Stretched luminance frame showing IFN

The IFN shows only very faintly on the 600 second luminance frames taken for this image: indeed, I first thought the traces on my stacked luminance frames were actually just poorly corrected gradients or other artefacts. To get the IFN to show up, I used the stretch, followed by the equalise function in PSP, which displays every available detail in the image (see left).  This revealed traces of the IFN, albeit rather crudely.  I then applied a large Gaussian blur (4 pixels) to smooth up the noise, and then layered the smoothed frame over the LRGB in luminance mode at about 10%. The burnt-out galaxy areas were erased to give the final image, which shows the M81/M82 pair shining through the faint dusty debris of our own galaxy. The faint arcs of dust evidenced around M82 in my image appear to correspond to similar features shown in much deeper exposures.

Flats were essential in order to eliminate image artefacts from the LRGBHa stacks, which would mask the faint IFN traces.  The Ha and red frames were combined as a 30/70 blend, although it seems the H-alpha exposures were not really deep enough to fully show up the starburst tendrils of H-alpha emissions that are being ejected from the poles of M82.

The Pumpkin Patch in Auriga...

Sh2-232, Sh2-235, Sh2-231, Sh2-233

Objects: Sharpless 2-232 (Pumpkin Nebula), Sh2-235, Sh2-231 and Sh2-233
Type: Emission Nebulae 
Constellation: Auriga
Distance: 5870 light years

Dates: 11th, 13th and 16th. February 2020
Equipment: ATIK 460EX with EFW2, Skywatcher f5.5 Esprit 100 ED refractor, Avalon Linear mount, guiding with Lodestar X2/PHD

Subframes: 12 x Red (300s), 12 x Green (300s), 12 x Blue (300s), 20 x 600s H-alpha, 12 x 600s OIII (2x2 binned), no flats/darks (hot pixel removal in Astroart).

Stellarium map showing location of Sh2-232

Between Theta Aurigae and Iota Aurigae (the two southernmost stars of the “kite” of the constellation of Auriga) lies a string of emission nebulae. The above image shows four faint areas of nebulosity lying just to the east of the brighter and better known nebulae IC 410 and IC 405.  Of these, Sh2-235 is the most central and the brightest nebula of an H II region known as G174 + 2.5; it is observed in the direction of the northern part of the OB Aur OB1 association and includes the nebulae catalogued as Sh2-231, Sh2-232, Sh2-233 and Sh2-235, identified in the 1959 Sharpless catalogue of H II regions.

Although in optical images they appear as distinct nebulae, in reality they all belong to a single giant molecular cloud, some parts of which appear illuminated by young and hot stars. The cloud is found in the Milky Way spiral Arm of Perseus at a galactic latitude which places it slightly off-centre with respect to the centre of the galactic disc.

Sh2-232 is very faint in comparison to Sh2-235 and much larger, covering an area slightly greater than that of the full moon. Its photographic appearance has given it the nickname of the Pumpkin Nebula.  Although it appears in the above image as similar in brightness to its companions, this is an artefact of image processing: it has been selectively “stretched” to bring out detail.  The annotated unstreched hydrogen alpha image (below) shows the true relative brightnesses of the nebulae.

Annotated H-alpha frame showing true relative brightnesses

There is very little OIII detail to be had, although it did highlight the little planetary nebula lying just off-centre in Sh2-232 (circled opposite). The OIII stack was stretched and combined with the blue filter stack, with the H alpha data being combined with the red filter stack. The Ha and OIII data were combined as layers in “multiply” mode and then combined with the green filter stack. The three colour channels were then RGB combined and a partial Ha layer added over it in luminance mode, with some smoothing and star reduction plus other selective boosts to colour saturation, sharpness and brightness to give the final image.

Sky conditions were not great on any of the three nights I collected data. Attempts to boost the brightness of Sh2-232 have resulted in a rather noisy image, but it is a rather more colourful rendition of this area than is usually seen and I quite like it.

IC 434 and friends...

NGC 2024, IC 434, NGC 2023, IC 435 and the Horsehead Nebula (B33)

Object: IC 434
Type: Emission nebula 
Constellation: Orion
Distance: 1500 light years

Date: 1st February 2020

Equipment: ATIK 460EX with EFW2, Skywatcher f5.5 Esprit 100 ED refractor, Avalon Linear mount, guiding with Lodestar X2/PHD

Subframes: 30 x 300s H-alpha, 6 x 300s each for RGB (2x2 binned), no flats/darks (hot pixel removal in Astroart).

Stellarium map showing area imaged

IC 434 is a bright emission nebula in the constellation Orion.  Discovered on February 1, 1786 by William Herschel, the nebulosity extends down for over one degree from Alnitak (zeta Orionis), the easternmost star in Orion’s Belt. 

It is part of the much larger Orion Molecular Cloud Complex, one of the most active regions of nearby stellar formation visible in the night sky, and is home to both protoplanetary discs and very young stars. Much of it is bright in infrared wavelengths due to the heat-intensive processes involved in stellar formation, though the complex contains dark nebulae, emission nebulae, reflection nebulae, and H II regions.

Just to the north of IC 434 is the Flame Nebula (NGC 2024, Sh2-277). It lies 1,500 light-years away and is illuminated by Alnitak. Additional dark gas and dust lies in front of the bright part of the nebula resulting in the dark network, appearing to permeate the glowing gas. At the centre of the Flame Nebula is a cluster of several hundred newly formed stars, discovered by the Chandra X-ray Observatory.

Annotated objects in main image

Just below NGC 2024 lies NGC 2023 (LBN 954), an emission and reflection nebula. It was discovered by William Herschel on 6 January 1785. It is four light-years in diameter, making it one of the largest reflection nebulae ever discovered. It is illuminated by the star HD 37903, the most luminous member of the stars in the Lynds 1630 molecular cloud.  A smaller reflection nebula, IC 435, lies just to the east of NGC 2023.

At the western edge of Lynds 1630, a swirl of dark nebulosity shows up against the background glow of IC 434.  This is the famous Horsehead Nebula (Barnard 33), first recorded in 1888 by Scottish astronomer Williamina Fleming on a photographic plate taken at the Harvard College Observatory. The Horsehead Nebula is approximately 1375 light years from Earth.