Both of these superb galaxies are nearly 12 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major.
Messier 81 on the left (also known as Bode's Galaxy) is a spiral galaxy first discovered by Johann Elert Bode in 1774. Its 90,000 light years across and contains more than 250 billion stars.
Messier 82 on the right (also known as the cigar galaxy) is a starburst galaxy.
From our point of view the smaller cigar galaxy is almost side on. Its 38,000 light years across and contains more than 30 billion stars.
Our galaxy The Milky Way is 120,000 light years across and contains around 400 billion stars (one of which is the Sun).
Both galaxies cannot be seen with the naked eye as they are just too faint.
I think its such a shame that these wonders cannot be seen by just gazing at the sky.
Image details include 45 light frames @240 seconds (3 hours) plus 36 dark frames, 34 flat frames and 34 Bias frames. Camera was Canon 40d astromodified and scope was a field flattened skywatcher Evostar ED80 pro. Guided with a Skywatcher ST80 fitted with a ZWOASI120MC camera, software was PHD guiding. Stacked in Deepsky stacker and finished in Photoshop CC.
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