M81 — Bode's Galaxy

About

A grand-design spiral galaxy in Ursa Major, about 12 million light-years away, with an active nucleus around a black hole of roughly 70 million Suns. A Type IIb supernova, SN 1993J, appeared in it in 1993.

Imaging tips

• The galaxy spans about 26′ by 14′, so 930–1,550 mm on APS-C (1,430–2,380 mm full frame) frames it alone.
• One imager framed M81 and M82 together with a 300 mm lens on APS-C, which also picks up the faint dust around them.
• That dust, the integrated flux nebula, is very faint: one imager took 480 × 30 s (4 hours) under a sky near 21.6 mag/arcsec², another 47 × 60 s.
• Stays high from mid-northern sites, reaching about 71° at 50°N; best in February and March.