Cigar Galaxy or M82

The fumes red of the Cigar galaxy

To celebrate 16 years of success, the Hubble Space Telescope, the two space agencies, NASA and European Space Agency (ESA), released this beautiful image of the irregular galaxy, Messier 82 (M82) also called, the cigar galaxy. In the center of this galaxy there is a huge concentration of young stars embedded in gas and dust. The super galactic winds generated by these stars compresses enough gas to give rise to even greater star. In M82, young stars are crammed into tiny clusters of stars, but massive. These masses congregate by the dozens and emit light output as "lumps" in the central part of M82. Clusters can not be distinguished in this Hubble image. Most objects pale and white, who sprinkle the area around M82 that look like fuzzy stars are actually individual star clusters about 20 light years in diameter. These clusters can contain up to one million stars. The rapid pace of star formation in this galaxy, finally undergoes his own restraint. When star formation becomes too intense, it will consume and destroy the material needed to make more stars. The twinkling stars, will die, probably within a few tens of millions of years.

Located 12 million light years away, M82 appears high in the air spring in the north in the direction of the constellation Ursa Major. If it is called the "Cigar Galaxy", is due to the elliptical shape produced by the oblique tilt of its starry disk. The images were captured in March 2006 with the Advanced Camera for Surveys' Wide Field Channel. Astronomers have assembled this mosaic of six composite images by combining exposures taken with four colored filters that capture starlight from visible wavelengths and infrared as well as the light of glowing hydrogen filaments.

Image: This beautiful image, taken in March 2006 of the starburst galaxy, Messier 82 (M82) is the net, wide viewing angle, never obtained.
This galaxy is remarkable for its bright blue disk, webs for its ragged clouds and red flames, light hydrogen.
In the central regions of young stars are being born.
Credit: NASA, ESA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI / AURA). Hubble images high resolution ESA.

The cigar in the infrared

Cigar galaxy was once considered an irregular galaxy.
However, in 2005, two symmetric spiral arms have been discovered in the near infrared (NIR) images of M82. The arms were found by subtracting the axisymmetric disc from NIR images.
These galactic arms seen in the infrared, the ends of the bulb, extend over three times the length of the disk. Although the arms were detected in infrared images, they are bluer than the disk.
The Chandra X-ray Observatory has detected fluctuations of X-ray emission, from a point approximately 600 light years from the center of M82. Astronomers have theorized that the X-ray emission, comes from the fluctuations of a small black hole through from 200 to 5000 solar masses.
But the galaxy M82, like most galaxies, hosts at its center a supermassive black hole.
This black hole has a huge mass of about 3 x 107 solar masses.
In April 2010, radio astronomers at the Jodrell Bank Observatory, University of Manchester, noted the existence of an unknown object in M82.
This object has sent radio waves ever seen before.

No theory could explain the observed data, although it was suggested that the object could be a "micro-quasar", with very high brightness fairly stable.
However, micro quasars produce large amounts of X-rays, and no X-ray was emitted from this mysterious object.
The galaxies M81 and M82 form a remarkable pair of small telescopes. The two galaxies are quite similar as the distance between their centers is only about 150 000 light years.
M82, close to the spectacular spiral M81 is gravitationally affected by its larger neighbor.
The tidal forces caused by the gravity of M81, this galaxy distorted, it is a process that started there are about 100 million years.
This strong interaction, star formation accelerates, compared to the average of the galaxies.
The galaxies M81 and M82, M81 are members of the group and are located in the constellation Ursa Major.

Image: Chandra X-ray Observatory image of the cigar galaxy in X-ray.