H.G. Wells knew a thing or two about the concept of time travel when he published his book The Time Machine in 1895.  Since starting astrophotography in 2014, reflecting on the progress I have since made can also feel like a journey through time.

In May 2018, I managed to obtain my first image of the northern sky, which at my previous location in Surrey was completely obscured from view at my main imaging location.  The result then obtained under a Bortle-6 night sky, was a modest 2hr 45m image of Messier 81 & 82 seen here.  Notwithstanding, it was something of a breakthrough for me and I was – at the time – very pleased with the result.  Nearly 8-years later, now located in the wonderful Bortle-4 dark skies of Somerset, I recently chose to image these two magnificent Messier objects once again.          

M81 and M82 are two well-known galaxies in the northern sky, which being just 20^o from Polaris are also circumpolar.  Located in the constellation Ursa Major, they appear near each other in the sky and interact gravitationally.  Both galaxies were discovered in 1774 by the German astronomer Johann Elert Bode and later included in the Messier Catalogue.  Together, M81 and M82 form the central members of the M81 Group, a small cluster of galaxies located not far from our own Local Group.

M81, also called Bode’s Galaxy (see above), is a spiral galaxy around 12 million light-years from Earth and one of the brightest galaxies visible from the Northern Hemisphere. The diameter is about 90,000 light-years, slightly smaller than the Milky Way, with a supermassive black hole at the centre.  M82 or the Cigar Galaxy, is a starburst galaxy, thus forming new stars at an extremely high rate. This intense star formation is believed to have been triggered by the aforesaid gravitational interactions with M81.  This activity creates powerful stellar winds and explosions from massive stars going supernova, that eject huge streams of gas and dust out of the galaxy to form dramatic red plumes that extend thousands of light-years above and below the galactic disk.

New equipment, software, greater processing experience and a dark sky location, have resulted in an exciting image that highlights the progress I have made on my astrophotography journey since 2018.