Galaxy Season 2026
4/2026
ASI2600MM Pro, 950mm, f/3.8,, 32.4h (R/G/B 3x2.7h, Lum: 4.1h, Ha: 21.1h)
Starting in April the so-called Galaxy Season starts in the northern hemisphere. Until late summer available astronomical targets are, more or less, limited to galaxies, which do need a slightly larger focal length. With about 1000mm at least the larger ones may be captured in reasonable detail, so I start with M81 and M82.
The galaxy pair Messier 81 (Bode's Galaxy) and Messier 82 (Cigar Galaxy) is a great target for this range of focal length and frequently imaged.
Both belong to the M81 Group, which contains about 60 galaxies and is the second nearest galaxy group at a distance of about 12 million lightyears.
These most prominent members are discovered by the german astronomer Johann Elert Bode back in 1774.
This image was taken while testing a new reflector telescope under limited conditions for LRGB and upcoming full Moon for H-Alpha. However, even smaller details can be resolved as shown here in Bode's Galaxy:
The pale blue patch above the galaxy is indeed another irregular dwarf galaxy named Homberg IX or UGC5336. It was discovered in 1959 by Sidney van den Bergh and at an age of 200 million years it is rather young.
Under dark skies M81 may already be resolved using binoculars.
Right next to M81 and within gravitationlal dependency we have the smaller Cigar Galaxy Messier 82:
Despite its unusual shape, newer surveys detected spiralic arms. It is assumed that an interaction with M81 some 500 million years ago intensified star forming activity within M82 so it is one of the brightest galaxies in infrared and radio wavelength.