M82: Peculiar Starbust Galaxy (Lilith Gaither)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Ursa Major (UMa) · Contains: Cigar Galaxy · M 82 · NGC 3034 · PGC 2731294 · PGC 2732102 · PGC 2732338 · PGC 3097961

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M82: Peculiar Starbust Galaxy

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M82: Peculiar Starbust Galaxy

Despite bad weather making this image take seemingly forever and less-than-ideal guiding, the galaxy disk seemed to have a good level of detail in the hydrogen filaments. The use of entropy-driven detail enhancement in StarTools 1.6a allowed the outer extent of the filaments to show well, given the use broadband filters only rather than a narrow Hα-isolating filter.

A beautifully peculiar irregular galaxy 12 million ly away within the northern constellation of Ursa Major at declination +70°. This is a bright starburst galaxy, five times more luminous than our galaxy with a core more than 100 times brighter than our galaxy's center. The starburst interaction was likely triggered by neighboring galaxy M81.

This galaxy was previously thought to be an irregular galaxy, though near-infrared (NIR) imagery has revealed two symmetric spiral arms within the galaxy. Despite being discovered in NIR, the arms are bluer than the main galaxy disc. The arms were missed due to the high surface brightness, nearly edge on (~80°) view, and vast complex of HII filaments looking like as a red explosion.

The starburst core making up 1600 light years of the estimated 37,000 ly disk was found to have 197 young star clusters of about 200,000M☉ each. Interaction with its larger neighbor has increased star formation in the galaxy tenfold. This interaction also likely formed the stars of the disk 500 million years ago, funneling gas into the core within the last 200 million years, and beginning to deform the galaxy 100 million years ago. It is believed that in the past this galaxy was low surface brightness, with slight star formation triggered by M81.

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	3365781
PixInsight job	I1J3UID46EZJWXLBACH20FSEVB8WUBS8
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

RA (center)	09h55m51s.796
RA (top/left)	09h58m44s.342
RA (top/right)	09h53m02s.741
RA (bottom/right)	09h53m01s.800
RA (bottom/left)	09h58m38s.635

Dec (center)	+69°40′42″.74
Dec (top/left)	+69°50′04″.58
Dec (top/right)	+69°50′31″.40
Dec (bottom/right)	+69°31′10″.95
Dec (bottom/left)	+69°30′44″.98

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M82: Peculiar Starbust Galaxy

M82: Peculiar Starbust Galaxy

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