M81
M81 is a face on spiral galaxy located in Ursa Major. Beautiful detail can be seen in scopes in the 4" range and it displays many features in film and ccd imaging . This LRGB was created using an 11" scope and MX7c ccd camera . It is a 16x4min. exposure for color with a 10 minute exposure for the luminance channel. The luminance channel was sharpened using Mike's star bloat filter in AA 3.0 .The scope was guided using AstroArt 3.0 and Star 2000 interface . Combining of the luminance and color channel was done in Photoshop 6.01. The core of this galaxy is full of older stars while the knots in the spiral arms are loaded with hot young blue stars . A treat in any scope !