This image of the NASA / ESA Hubble spatial telescope reveals new details in Messier 82 (M82), which houses shiny stars whose light is shaded by sculptural cloths in clusters and streaks of dust and gas. This image presents the starry heart of the Galaxy, located only 12 million light years in the Constellation of Ursa Major (The Great Bear). Popularly known as Galaxy Cigar, M82 is considered a neighboring galaxy.
It is not surprising that M82 is filled with stars. The galaxy forms 10 times faster than the Milky Way. Astronomers call it a Starburst galaxy. The intense period of stebruthe which grasps this galaxy gave birth to super stars clusters in the heart of the galaxy. Each of these super star bunches contains hundreds of thousands of stars and is brighter than a typical star cluster. The researchers used Hubble to appear on these massive clusters and reveal how they are formed and evolve.
The previous views of Hubble on the galaxy captured Ultraviolet and visible light in 2012 and an almost infrared light and visible in 2006 to celebrate the 16th anniversary of Hubble. The NASA X -ray Observatory and the Spitzer space telescope also imagined this Starburst galaxy. The combination of Hubble Light Hubble visible and almost infrared data with the deeper infrared view of Chandra and the deeper infrared view provides a detailed overview of the stars of the galaxy, as well as the dust and the gas from which the stars are formed. More recently, the NASA / ESA / CSA James Webb space telescope focused on galaxy, producing infrared images in 2024 and earlier this year. These multiple views at different light wavelengths provide us with a more precise and complete image of this galaxy so that we can better understand its environment. Each of these NASA observatories offers unique and complementary information on the physical processes of the galaxy. The combination of their data gives information that improves our understanding in a way that no observatory could accomplish alone. This image presents something that it is not seen in the previously published Hubble images of the Galaxy: data from the high resolution channel of the advanced camera for surveys.
Contact with the media::
Claire Andreol (Claire.andreoli@nasa.gov))
Nasa Goddard Space Flight Center,, Greenery belt, MD
