The Garland Galaxy and Neighbors

 Here’s a widefield image with the Garland Galaxy (NGC 3077) at the center. NGC 3077 is a peculiar galaxy—more specifically, a disrupted elliptical. It is disrupted by the gravitational interactions of its larger neighbors, the Cigar Galaxy (M82) and Bode’s Galaxy (M81) (also shown in this very wide-angle image). The British Naval Officer, Admiral William Henry Smyth, described it as: "A bright-class round nebula; it is a lucid white, and lights up in the centre ... between these [stars,] the sky is intensely black, and shows the nebula as if floating in awful and illimitable space, at an inconceivable distance."

This image was taken with the RASA 8—a scope really unsuited to imaging most galaxies. I also used an NBZ filter, which reduced some of the details in the galaxies, but which also emphasized H2 regions as red areas/dots. The second image is a much-cropped version of the first. The image loses resolution as the imager is only 10 MP, but you can see the H2 regions in Bode’s Galaxy, as well as the fiery plumes erupting from the center of M82. These plumes are driven by massive star formation in the galactic center. Stars are being born here at a rate 10x higher than in our own galaxy. The galactic superwinds form these stars drives the formation of millions more and makes M82 a truly beautiful object to image. I hope to use the 14 inch later in the year to image this galaxy in more detail. Imaging through haze and trees was challenging and I was not really able to capture anywhere close to the amount of data I really needed for this image (hence the colored noise).