M81 is a beautifull spiral that is one of the great showpiece galaxies in the northern sky.

In 1993, a star inside of M81 exploded in a supernova named SN 1993J. Hold your mouse cursor over the image to see a photo of the supernova.

The supernova, discovered by Spanish amateur astronomer Francisco Garcia Diaz on March 28, 1993 with a 10 inch Newtonian telescope, was one of the brightest in recent years.

Other individual stars in these images are foreground stars that are located inside of our own galaxy, the Milky Way. Individual stars inside of other galaxies are usually not resolved because of their great distance. A supernova however, is bright enough to be recorded.

With a visual magnitude of 6.8, M81 is probably the farthest object that can be seen with the unaided eye at a distance of 12 million light years.

This image was taken using an 8" Ritchey Chretien Astrograph @ F/6.4 and Canon 40D DSLR. 16 images X 420 seconds @ ISO1600 were captured in Nebulosity. Guiding with PHD and processed in Images Plus and Photoshop CS5 with Noel Carboni`s Actions

The M33 spiral galaxy, also known as the Triangulum galaxy, is located around 3 million light years away in the constellation of its namesake. Its swirling arms of gas and dust where much of the galaxy’s star-forming regions are located give it a distinctive pinwheel shape. At 50,000 light years across, it is roughly half the size of our own Milky Way, and is steadily moving towards the Andromeda galaxy which it is thought to be gravitationally bound with. M33 is the third largest galaxy in the Local Group and is one of the most distant stellar objects visible to the naked eye. It was discovered first by Italian astronomer Giovanni Battista Hodierna before Charles Messier later catalogued it in 1764. M33 contains around 40 billion stars, compared to 400 billion for the Milky Way, and 1000 billion stars for Andromeda.and a recent discovery by the Chandra X-Ray Observatory shows that it contains the largest black hole known to astronomy, at 15.7 times the mass of our sun.

This image was taken with a Canon 40D modified DSLR and an 8" F/8 Ritchey Chretien Astrograph. Exposure settings are 37 x 5 mins. @ ISO 1600 captured in Nebulosity. Processing in Images Plus and Photoshop CS5.

Galaxy information researched by Craig Grice

Magnificent spiral galaxy NGC 4565 is viewed edge on from planet Earth. Also known as the Needle Galaxy for its narrow profile, bright NGC 4565 is a stop on many springtime telescopic tours of the northern sky as it lies in the faint but well-groomed constellation Coma Berenices. This image reveals the galaxy's bulging central core dominated by light from a population of older, yellowish stars. The core is dramatically cut by obscuring dust lanes which lace NGC 4565's thin galactic plane. A large island galaxy similar to our own Milky Way, NGC 4565 is only about 30 million light-years distant, but over 100,000 light-years in diameter.

This image comprises of 17 seperate exposures of 5 minutes @ ISO 1600 with a Canon 40D DSLR and 8" F/8 Richey Cretien Astrograph. Images captured,aligned and stacked in Nebulosity. Processing done in Images Plus and Photoshop CS5.

A bright spiral galaxy of the northern sky, Messier 63 is about 25 million light-years distant in the loyal constellation Canes Venetici. Also cataloged as NGC 5055, the majestic island universe is nearly 100,000 light-years across, about the size of our own Milky Way.  Known by the popular moniker, The Sunflower Galaxy,

This image was taken with a Canon 40D with LPS filter and 8" F/8 Richey Cretien Astrograph. 19 seperate 4 minute images @ ISO 1600 captured in Nebulosity and processed in Images Plus and Photoshop CS5. Below imaged cropped.