The Southern Pinwheel Galaxy, M81, is a barred spiral galaxy located about 15 million light-years away in the constellation Hydra. It is visible low in the southern skies of the North American latitudes typically only from late April through early July. M81 is so named since it bears such a strong resemblance to the Pinwheel Galaxy, M101, located near the handle of the big dipper.

This image was made with a Nikon Z7II and a Nikon 600mm f/6.3 lens. A total of 103 40 second exposures at ISO 3200 were made for a total of 68 minutes of exposure time. Star tracking was with a Fornax LighTrack II. Deep Sky Stacker was used to produce aligned tif files that were then sigma-clip averaged, stretched, and color corrected using Python code. Final image processing including noise reduction with Topaz DeNoise AI and some curves adjustments were done with Capture One.