TheSkySearchers

40mm plossl eyepiece. 11x with 70mm F6 telescope bortle 7 with 91% moon
It was only visible as the faintest fuzzy dot ever. in the corner of my eye but in the right location when i check stellarium I can confirm a triangle pattern of stars nearby in the right spot.
I saw it in averted vision a couple times very faintly. about as faint as m32. very very faint barely even visible at all.
I didnt see M82 though.

There is nothing quite like catching a galaxy in the eye.
M82 should have been very close in your Field of view.
With 40mm eyepiece you may be wasting some of the light. You have roughly a 6.6mm exit pupil in a 4° field of view. Depending on your eyes your pupil may not dialate that much and as I understand it the light that cannot fit in your pupil is lost...
Maybe try an EP of 25mm or 32mm. It may actually put more light in your eye even though you Fov will be smaller by 1/2° or so. M81 and M82 will still be in the same view.

Very nice catch Realflow.

P.S.
I just saw you are 24 yrs old. Your eyes may well have caught all the light there was to catch...
My eyes are 43 years older and they don't work as well that way...
So disregard all I said but for the shared excitement with you in this triumph...

I have a 2x barlow but the image is always significantly darker with it.
I dont think I would be able to find m82 with a smaller field of view. it was already EXTREMELY difficult as it is with the 40mm eyepiece at 11x
it took me forever to figure out where it was even with my binoculars which are only 7x50's which have a fixed 7mm exit pupil size. but I couldn't see it with my binoculars. There was nothing there at all. just some stars.

the lost light from a too-large exit pupil is not really a problem. you still see as bright of an image as your going to see whether its a 6mm exit pupil or a 10mm exit pupil. the wasted light isnt really a problem from what i can tell.

Here is a useful tool you might find interesting.
https://astronomy.tools/calculators/field_of_view/

stellarium also has a feature like that but its more fiddly to set up.

it should easily fit both in the view but It took me like 30 minutes just to find where it is cause theres such a lack of stars to star hop with.

if you go out with a 70mm scope yourself with the current moon with a 40mm to 20mm eyepiece range and try to find it you'll see what i mean by how difficult it is to find!

realflow100 wrote: ↑Tue Nov 16, 2021 8:58 am stellarium also has a feature like that but its more fiddly to set up.

it should easily fit both in the view but It took me like 30 minutes just to find where it is cause theres such a lack of stars to star hop with.

if you go out with a 70mm scope yourself with the current moon with a 40mm to 20mm eyepiece range and try to find it you'll see what i mean by how difficult it is to find!

Yup.
I have a 70mm f6 Skywatcher.
I have done as you have and it is impossible for me to star hop in those skies.
But when the sky is good and the moon is nill the 70mm is a wonderful tool with which to hop the stars.

And when success is had as you have had on M81 it makes it worth every moment of effort.

More clear darks skies to you.

Nice catch and keep an eye out for M82 next time. It looks like a mottled frisbee off to the side of M81. While fainter than M81 it's surface brightness is higher because it is more condensed.

I admire you trying to catch sight of a galaxy with the moon being what it is currently. Its presence in the sky at its current phase and brightness is definitely an impediment to seeing galaxies. So good on you for finding M81 under those conditions.