Instrument

12.5" RCOS @  ~f/9 (2880 mm fl) 0.64 arcsec / pixel.  The Zoomify image scale is 0.85 to 3.58 arcsec / pixel.

Mount

Paramount ME

Camera

SBIG STL-11000 w/ internal filter wheel, AstroDon Gen II Filters

Acquisition Data

3/2/2012 to 3/28/2012 Chino Valley, AZ... with CCDAutoPilot3 & CCDSoft.  AOL guided

Exposure

Lum  330 min. (11 x 30 min. bin 1x1 -  best of 18)

Ha    540 min. (18 x 30 min. bin 1x1)

RGB  360 min. (  8 x 15 min. each, bin 2x2)

Software

• CCDSoft, CCDStack, Photoshop CS3 w/ the Fits Liberator plugin, Noel Carboni's actions.

• eXcalibrator v3.0 (g-r) color balancing, using 67 stars from the SDSS-DR7 database.

• PixFix32 (pre-beta) to repair column defects.

• CCDStack to calibrate, register, normalize, data reject, combine the sub exposures, selective deconvolution and the RGB color image.

• PhotoShop for adding the Ha data to the Luminance and RGB data, none-linear stretching and L(ha)R(ha)GB combine.

• Noiseware Pro, a PhotoShop plug-in.

• Photomatix Tone Mapping, a PhotoShop plug-in

North is to the top. 

M82, the Cigar Galaxy, was stirred up by a recent pass near the large spiral galaxy M81. However, this doesn't fully explain the source of the red-glowing outwardly expanding gas. Recent evidence indicates that this gas is being driven out by the combined emerging particle winds of many stars. This image highlights a specific color of red light strongly emitted by ionized hydrogen gas, showing detailed filaments of this gas. The filaments extend for over 10,000 light years. The 12-million light-year distant Cigar Galaxy is the brightest galaxy in the sky in infrared light, and can be seen in visible light with a small telescope towards the constellation of Ursa Major.

Source: NASA APOD