M81, also known as Bode's Galaxy, is a spiral galaxy located ~12 million light-years away in the constellation of Ursa Major. Discovered by German astronomer Johann Elert Bode in 1774, this cosmic island is roughly 90,000 light-years in diameter—comparable in size to our own Milky Way—and is home to over 250 billion stars. It is a popular target of astrophotographers for its pristine, sweeping spiral arms filled with hot, blue, star-forming regions and dust lanes that wind directly down into a bright, compact core. At the very center of its active galactic nucleus lies a supermassive black hole weighing roughly 70 million solar masses. This HaLRGB image was captured in a Queen Creek (Arizona) Bortle 7/8 backyard using a Skywatcher Esprit 150ED telescope. The telescope is mounted on a 10Micron GM2000 HPS II mount. The camera is a ZWO ASI 2600MM Pro using Antlia VPRO LRGB and 3nm HA filters. It was captured over 28 nights (2022-12-24 to 2024-05-11).…