M82 First Time
by Mike Hankey, under Galaxies
I took this picture of M82 on Apr 18, 2009, the same night I got the whirlpool galaxy. It was a perfect night all around. I had near perfect polar alignment (bigest factor in taking good pics i’ve learned so far), the lights were out and the sky was very dark and very clear. I had spent most of the night photographing the whirlpool, it was after 2:00 AM and I was like… let me try and get one more object. On a whim, I set the goto to M82. The galaxy was perfectly framed in my eye piece so I took a few snaps (20 at 1-2 minutes each). I’m pretty happy with the results.