M 82 - Cigar Galaxy

The Messier 82 (“Cigar Galaxy”) is a starburst galaxy located about 12 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major, with a diameter of roughly 37,000 light-years. We observe its highly inclined disk at an angle of about 80°, nearly edge-on but slightly from above, allowing both the structure and the outflowing gas to be seen particularly clearly. Gravitational interaction with its neighboring galaxy Messier 81 triggers an exceptionally high rate of star formation in its core. The resulting supernovae and stellar winds drive a powerful “superwind” that expels gas and dust perpendicular to the galactic disk. These outflows appear as reddish, filamentary structures and form the characteristic bipolar jets visible above and below the disk. At greater distances, the so-called “Cap” forms—a region of shock-heated gas made visible by the galactic wind.

These images are the result of a long-term project using very long integration times to achieve high detail with minimal noise. The total exposure time amounts to 94 hours and 15 minutes, including 28 hours and 45 minutes of LRGB data and 65 hours and 30 minutes captured with a dual narrowband filter. The H-alpha component was extracted using continuum subtraction. Thanks to the depth of the data, numerous faint background galaxies are also visible, including, for example, the approximately 543 million light-years distant PGC 2732102.

Shooting Data