Camera: Starlight Xpress SXVF-H16 with FLI CFW-2-7 Filter Wheel

Mount: Losmandy G-11/Gemini

Scope: Astro-Physics Starfire AP130 EDF

Colors: L:R:G:B:Ha:O3

Exposure Time: Over 7 hrs

Post-Production: MaxIm DL, CCDStack, PixInsight, and Photoshop CS3

These two objects are apparently the same size the the sky, but they are not the same at all. The object on the upper right (M97 - The Owl Nebula) is a star that is expelling gas shells at it slowly dies and becomes a white dwarf. It is only approximately 1500 light years distant from Earth. The object in the lower left of the frame is a nearly edge-on galaxy (M108) that is composed of several hundred billion stars and is approximately 45 million light years distant from Earth. These two objects can be captured in a single frame and make this area of Ursa Major a very nice place to point your telescope! This image is a combination of narrowband data taken with an SBIG ST2000XM camera through Optec Ha and O3 filters, and some earlier data taken with an FLI CM-10 camera. The CM-10 camera has a chip that "blooms', which means that the brighter stars essentially "drip" data across the CCD. These brighter stars were corrected for using software. This image includes over 7 hours of luminance, red, green, blue, hydrogen alpha, and O3 data.