Image of the Month - January 2020

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Daniel Meek from The Royal Latin School

Congratulations to Daniel ​for winning the January Image of the Month competition. We had lots of lovely images submitted this month, but what really stood out for us was the details that accompanied this image. We love to see how you have used the NSO to learn all about space and Daniel ​nailed it!

Taken for my GCSE astronomy course this image is comprised of 3 images using 3 filters red, green, and blue to produce this colour image in visible light. I combined the images in gimp using the compose tool. M 82 is an active galaxy in an eliptical orbit of another larger galaxy. It passed close to its parent galaxy relatively recently disturbing the gas clouds in its disc and core producing lots of star formation making messier 82 very bright and active."


You can make your own image of the M82 by searching our archive for observations and using software such as LTImage to process them.

Messier 82 by user dalzell9