M81, also known as the Bode’s Galaxy, is a Type SA(s)ab spiral 12 million light-years from Earth in constellation Ursa Major and its diameter is 96,000 light-years. M81 has an apparent magnitude of 6.94 and can be observed with a pair of binoculars.  This galaxy was discovered by a German astronomer Johan Elert Bode in 1774.  In 1779, Pierre Méchain and Charles Messier re-identified Bode’s object, hence listed it in the Messier Catalogue.

The galaxy’s central bulge contains much older, redder stars. It is significantly larger than the Milky Way’s bulge. A black hole of 70 million solar masses resides at the center of M81 and is about 15 times the mass of the Milky Way’s central black hole.

The list below exhibits the number of subframes used with the exposure time for each filter. All the subframes were calibrated with Flats, Darks and Biases by PixInsight. Afterwards the subframes were combined and processed to the final image.

^* 2×2 binned

Total time for collecting data for this image is 21.3 hours.