M82 – Astronomy Now

The mighty Andromeda Galaxy and its retinue

9 October 2023 Mark Armstrong

Messier 31, the Great Galaxy in Andromeda, is the closest major galaxy to our Solar System and the dominant galaxy in the Local Group of galaxies, larger than our own Milky Way Galaxy.

SOFIA captures magnetic tapestry at the core of M82

23 April 2019 Astronomy Now

M82, a favourite target for amateur and professional astronomers alike, is the nearest starburst galaxy with a brilliant core 100 times more luminous than the Milky Way’s. Astronomers have detected and mapped the galaxy’s magnetic field in a dramatic composite image.

Hubble spots expanding light echo around supernova

10 November 2017 Astronomy Now

Light from a supernova explosion in the nearby starburst galaxy M82 is reverberating off a huge dust cloud in interstellar space.

M82: Starburst Galaxy with a Superwind by Leonardo Orazi

28 August 2016 Astronomy Now

About 12 million light years away from our planet, lays the starburst galaxy M82, also known as the Cigar Galaxy. In a show of radiant red, the superwind bursts out from the galaxy where a plethora of stars are forming.

Hubble sees a distinctly disorganised dwarf galaxy

28 March 2016 Astronomy Now

In this Hubble Space Telescope image we see an irregular dwarf galaxy known as UGC 4459, located in the constellation of Ursa Major (The Great Bear). While UGC 4459’s diffused and disorganised stellar population of several billion sounds impressive, this is small when compared to the 200 to 300 billion stars in the Milky Way.

Ultra-bright pulsar is an X-ray mystery

13 October 2014 Keith Cooper

Blinding bursts of X-rays are coming from a supercharged pulsar lying in a galaxy 10 million light years away, more powerful than any pulsar ever seen before. The discovery, by NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, challenges what we thought we knew about these extreme objects.