M81 - Bode's Galaxy
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- RA: 09:55.6
- Dec: +69:04
- Magnitude: 6.9
- Distance: 12,000,000 ly
- Size: 21 x 10 arc min
- Constellation: Ursa Major
- Scope: 8" SCT at f/10
- Autoguider: ST-4 in faint mode
- Sky conditions: good transparency and good seeing
- Film: Kodak Supra 400
- Exposure: 2 x 45 minutes
- Date: March 26, 2003 and April 9, 2003
Comments: Temperature was in the upper 20s. The night started out great but clouds rolled in about 2:30 am. I decided on shorter exposures because I knew the clouds were coming. I managed to get out again at the quarter moon and put another 45 minutes of exposure on this galaxy. M81 forms a conspicuous physical pair with its neighbor M82, and is the brightest and probably dominant galaxy of a nearby group call M81 group. A few tens of million years ago a close encounter occurred between the galaxies M81 and M82. During this event, the larger and more massive M81 has dramatically deformed M82 by gravitational interaction. The galaxies are still close together, their centers separated by a linear distance of only about 150,000 light years.