SUNSET: 
0
Photographer:
Jon Greif
Location of Photo:
Alpine, CA, USA
Date/Time of photo:
April 21, 2024, from 9 pm to 3 am PDT
Equipment:
Seestar S50 "smart" scope. 1580 10-sec subs, integrated and processed in Pixinsight.
Description:
It's galaxy season, and two of my favorites are M81 (upper left) and M82 (lower right), a pair of galaxies located in the constellation, Ursa Major. M81 (Bode’s Galaxy) is a face-on spiral galaxy, about half the diameter of our Milky Way, and lies approximately 11.8 million light-years away, while M82 (The Cigar Galaxy) is an irregular edge-on galaxy at roughly the same distance. These galaxies have a gravitational lock on each other and interact, affecting the shape and composition of one another. This image was shot last night, over about 6 hours, from our front yard with the telescope in the shadow of the nearly full moon.
