This photo was taken in April 2020 in Sweden with my astro modified DSLR camera from 2007 and a 600mm photo lens with a tracker mounted between the (normal) photo tripod and the camera!

The astro modification is essentially just a removal of the built-in UV/IR-filter glued onto the front of the sensor – this modification makes the camera more sensitive to the faint red Hydrogen-Alpha wavelengths of light (visible in both Bode’s and Cigar galaxies).
The tracker follows the night sky as it “turns” due to the rotation of Earth – without it the image would be some uninteresting stratrails (lines in the sky).

Distances to visible galaxies in this photo:

Most obvious are:
M81 (Bode’s Galaxy): 11.42 MLY (*)
M82 (Cigar Galaxy): 11.74 MLY (*)
NGC 3077 (Garland Galaxy): 13,67 MLY (*)
NGC 2976: 12.75 MLY (*)
NGC 2959: 205 MLY (*)

But if you look closely to middle left side of the image you might notice what at first looks like a smeared out star and if you zoom in you’ll see it’s neighbour too (**) – these are:
NGC 2961: 210 MLY (*)
UGC 5210: 215 MLY (*)

The images were taken over 3 nights on 22-24 April 2020 and processed in PixInsight with most weighting on images from the the 22th

* MLY = million light years
** There are actually other visible galaxies in the photo than mentioned (especially visible on the full resolution version of the image (not available for web display)) – but they are so hard to distinct in this low resolution version of the original that they aren’t worth mentioning here 🙂
To see the 100% zoomed in on the Bode’s and Cigar Galaxies (same photo) take a look on the Bode’s & Cigar Galaxies photo

More photo details:
Stugan, Elovsbyn, Värmland, Sweden
April 2020 @ 5°C

Tracker: iOptron SkyGuider Pro
Mount: Manfrotto MT055 XPRO3 Alu
Head: Manfrotto MHXPRO-BHQ2 Magnesium Ball Head

Lights: 35x5min
Bias: 90 subs
Darks: 60×5 min
Flats: 188 subs