Bode’s Galaxy - Messier-81
Bode’s Galaxy is a beautiful subject for amateur astrophotographers because it is bright and face-on.
Radio messages to the nearby planets take several minutes, but a radio messages to Bode’s Galaxy takes 12 million years. Indeed, these distances are truly difficult to comprehend, yet, it is considered nearby on an intergalactic scale.
As it appears almost face-on, we get a good look at the composition of a typical spiral galaxy. I expect to see spiral arms that suggest gravitational forces on a spinning disk. However, look closely: there are cross-hatching patterns in the clouds that don’t fit this formula. Professional astronomers suggest that there might be two Black Holes at the centre. I speculate that it may explain the pattern of “tartan” clouds that I captured here (and confirmed in photos by others).
This image is a composite of the best 92 photos from 120 (3 minutes each) that I captured from my garden in Strasbourg France on two evenings in March 2025 (120 x 3 minutes = 6 hours of imaging).
