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| M82, (NGC3034) An irregular galaxy, sometimes called the Cigar Galaxy, cropped and downsized to fit screen. |
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M82 is located about half way between the lip of the Big Dipper and the North star.
You might be able to spot it as a faint, small, oblong smudge with
binoculars, and it is an easily seen object with an 8" telescope or more. It has a visual brightness of about 8.4 magnitude, and is 12 million light years away. M82 and its neighbor M81, just 3/4 degree away, form a remarkable pair of galaxies. They are close together and both relatively big and bright. M82 here is the less bright and smaller galaxy of the pair, but one could say it is the more interesting one. They have been dancing around with another for at least a billion years. The galaxies are still close together, with their centers only 150,000 light years apart, which for comparison is not much more than the total width of our own Milky Way. About 45 million years ago was the most recent close encounter between them ... very recent on the cosmic time scale. During that encounter, the more massive M81 deformed M82 into the irregularly shaped galaxy you see here. Its core seems to have been affected the most, showing huge gaseous regions of heavy star forming activity. The turbulent explosive gases are a strong source of radio noise. Recently, over 100 freshly-formed globular shaped star clusters were discovered using the Hubble Space Telescope. |
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10" F6.3
Schmidt Cassegrain reflector, Canon 40D at Prime focus, Hutech PS2 light
pollution filter. |