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Messier 82

This galaxy's center is forming stars 10 times faster than our entire Milky Way.

Distance

12 million light-years

Apparent Magnitude

8.4

constellation

Ursa Major

object type

Spiral Galaxy

M82
This stunning Hubble image of M82 was assembled using observations at different wavelengths. The red in the image represents hydrogen and infrared light, indicating starburst activity. The blue and greenish-yellow color represent visible wavelengths of light.
NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA); Acknowledgment: J. Gallagher (University of Wisconsin), M. Mountain (STScI) and P. Puxley (National Science Foundation)

M82 or the Cigar galaxy, shines brightly at infrared wavelengths and is remarkable for its star formation activity. The Cigar galaxy experiences gravitational interactions with its galactic neighbor, M81, causing it to have an extraordinarily high rate of star formation — a starburst.

core of M82
This Hubble image is the most detailed view of M82’s core ever captured. It isolates the light from glowing gas clouds, while blocking out much of the starlight. The image shows the light emitted by sulfur (in red), visible and ultraviolet light from oxygen (in green and blue, respectively), and light from hydrogen (in cyan).
ESA/Hubble & NASA

Around the galaxy’s center, young stars are being born 10 times faster than they are inside our entire Milky Way galaxy. Radiation and energetic particles from these newborn stars carve into the surrounding gas, and the resulting galactic wind compresses enough gas to make millions of more stars. The rapid rate of star formation in this galaxy eventually will be self-limiting. When star formation becomes too vigorous, it will consume or destroy the material needed to make more stars. The starburst will then subside, probably in a few tens of millions of years.

A close-in view of the center of galaxy M82. Bright, bluish light radiating from the center is due to stars actively forming there. A thick lane of gas, black in the center and red around the edges, crosses the center and blocks much of the light. Thinner strands and clumps of reddish dust cover much of the rest of the view.
This Hubble image reveals details in Messier 82's heart, home to brilliant stars whose light is shaded by sculptural clouds made of clumps and streaks of dust and gas. The image includes data from the High Resolution Channel of Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys.
ESA/Hubble & NASA, W. D. Vacca

M82 was discovered, along with its neighbor M81, by the German astronomer Johann Elert Bode in 1774. Located 12 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Ursa Major, M82 has an apparent magnitude of 8.4 and is best observed in April. Although it is visible as a patch of light with binoculars in the same field of view as M81, larger telescopes are needed in order to resolve the galaxy’s core.

Active Galaxy M82 Details
Left: A portion of M82's bluish disk, largely composed of young, hot stars. Numerous bright blue-white star-forming clumps and wisps of darker, cooler dust and gas appear superimposed on the diskCenter: The central "inner-city" portion of the galaxy showing the combined light of countless stars and revealing numerous star-forming clumps, dark red clouds of gas and dust obscuring the light from the galaxy's core, and an overall field of fainter resolved and unresolved red (cooler) and blue (hotter) starsRight: Plumes of gas and dust amid a field of numerous faint, resolved stars blown from the central regions of M82 into the outer "suburbs."
NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

For more information about Hubble’s observations of M82, see:

locator star chart for M82
This star chart for M82 represents the view from mid-northern latitudes for the given month and time.
Image courtesy of Stellarium

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