Saturday, May 31, 2014

M81 Bode's Nebula(Galaxy) and M82 the Cigar Galaxy

M81 Bode on left and M82 Cigar on the right

I just finished looking at these two objects from the backyard, and they are not easy to see in my 8" reflector.  Stellarium calls M81 Bode's Nebula even though it is a galaxy.  So that's what I am going to call it also.  Bode is listed as a 6.9 mag object and the Cigar as a 8.4 mag.  These are both Messier objects and will be counted against my goal of viewing all of them this summer.  Note: That is not my picture shown here...





Both of these objects could be same in the same view using my Televue Panoptics 24" eyepiece with a 68 degree AFOV.   Bode was the brighter of the two objects.

I first zoomed in on Bode's Nebula (M81) by switching to a Televue Nagler 5mm eyepiece and then adding a Televue 2x barlow.  More than a smudge was visible, but not too bright and pretty much no detail to be seen.  It was like a disappointing view of The Great Cluster In Hercules, with none of the detail.

The Cigar Galaxy (M82) was just a thin strip of faint light.  It was rather pointy like shown in the picture above, but much fainter.  No amount of power gave me anything other than a thin smudge.

Both objects are located in Ursa Major and are rather easy to find, because with a lower power eyepiece you may see them both at the same time.  I took some pictures but they are pretty bad.  I wasn't able to achieve focus and I need to get to bed.  I may post one just for a good laugh...