M81, also known as Bode's Galaxy, is an impressive spiral galaxy in Ursa Major and is the largest galaxy in the M81 group of galaxies. In a telescope, M81 is quite large with an apparent diameter of 27' x 14'. Morever, M81 is only 1/2 degree from its close neighbor, M82. The two galaxies are gravitationally interacting, and the dramatic distortions of M82 are proof positive that M81 is the winner in the collision.

The faint galaxy to the left of M81 is Holmberg IX, a dwarf satellite galaxy of M81.

In this image, North is up. This image is cropped to 64% of the original full frame.

Exposure Details
Lens	Celestron C-8 SCT with Celestron focal reducer
Focal Length	1260mm
Focal Ratio	f/6.3
Mount	Schaefer GEM - 7 1/2
Guiding	80mm f/11 guidescope with PHD Guiding
Camera	Canon 450D - Gary Honis modified
Exposure	177 subexposures of 180 seconds at ISO 1600 - just under 9 hours
Calibration	30 darks, 30 flats, 30 bias
Date	Feb 16 and 28, 2012 and March 2, 2012
Temperature	34F on 2/16, 30F on 2/28, 43F on 3/2
SQM Reading	21.4 on 2/16, 21.2 on 2/28, 21.3 on 3/2
Seeing	3 of 5 on 2/16 and 2/28, 4 of 5 on 3/2
Location	Pine Mountain Club, California
Software Used	Images Plus 4.5 for camera control, calibration, stacking, digital development, noise reduction, smoothing, and Lucy-Richardson deconvolution. Photoshop CS5 used for levels and curves, saturation adjustments, star shrinking, noise reduction, high pass filter, and color correction. Carboni Actions for additional saturation adjustments, noise reduction and smoothing. HLVG for addiitonal color correction. Registar for image alignment.
Notes	I employed some new processing techniques with image which allowed me to bring out some nice fine details. This image also captured Holmberg IX much better than my previous attempt. This image won 1st place in Digital Astro's Challenge Photo - Galaxy category for March 2012.