Cigar Galaxy

A starburst galaxy, remarkable for its bright blue disk, webs of shredded clouds, and fiery-looking plumes of glowing hydrogen blasting out of its central regions. Also known as the M82, it is located 12 million light-years away.

Throughout the central region of M82, young stars are being born 10 times faster than they are inside of our Milky Way Galaxy. These numerous hot new stars emit not only radiation but also particles called a stellar wind. Stellar winds streaming from these hot new stars also have combined to form a fierce galactic superwind. This superwind compresses enough gas to make millions more stars and blasts out towering plumes of hot ionised hydrogen gas, above and below the disk of the galaxy.

In M82 young stars are crammed into tiny but massive star clusters which themselves then congregate by the dozen to make the bright patches or "starburst clumps" seen in the central parts of M82. The individual clusters in the clumps can only be distinguished in ultra-sharp images. Most of the pale objects sprinkled around the main body of M82 that look like fuzzy stars are actually star clusters about 20 light-years across and containing up to a million stars.

The rapid rate of star formation in this galaxy will eventually be self-limiting. When star formation becomes too vigorous, it will destroy the material needed to make more stars and the starburst will subside, probably in a few tens of millions of years.