It’s galaxy season, and two of my favorites are M81 (upper left) and M82 (lower right), a pair of galaxies located in the constellation, Ursa Major. M81 (Bode’s Galaxy) is a face-on spiral galaxy, about half the diameter of our Milky Way, and lies approximately 11.8 million light-years away, while M82 (The Cigar Galaxy) is an irregular edge-on galaxy at roughly the same distance. These galaxies have a gravitational lock on each other and interact, affecting the shape and composition of one another. This image was shot last night, over about 6 hours, from our front yard with the telescope in the shadow of the nearly full moon.