#messier 82

[spacewonder19]

Cigar Galaxy has a star powered heart ©

[spacetelescopescience]

Let’s get to the heart of the matter: starburst galaxy M82.

A team of researchers recently completed an imaging survey of this edge-on spiral galaxy with the James Webb Space Telescope. Because of its infrared sensitivity, the telescope was able to see beyond the thick dust and resolve the central region of M82—revealing the galaxy’s distended disk structure and 16.5 million individual stars for the first time. Webb’s ability to resolve so many stars paves a way for astronomers to reconstruct M82’s star formation history, and more broadly, understand how the galaxy has evolved over time.

This Webb survey is the most recent addition to the overall data on M82. Multiple space observatories, such as the Hubble Space Telescope, have previously studied this intriguing environment. Each telescope offers a different view of M82: Hubble’s visible-light view shows the galaxy’s gas and dust structure, which conceals the features that are prominent in Webb’s infrared-light image.

To understand an intricate environment like M82, including its formation history, astronomers analyze data from various missions to obtain the fuller picture: https://news.stsci.edu/4xKw0MA

[quiltofstars]

Bode's Galaxy (M81, left) and the Cigar Galaxy (M82, right) // EW

[colorpicked-pride-flags-jwst]

[Hubble Thursdays] Aroace flag colorpicked from Messier 82, also known as the Cigar Galaxy

[webbn]

https://esawebb.org/news/weic2427/

25 November 2024 weic2427

[theskywatchersaga]

Cigar Galaxy (Final Edit)

The Cigar Galaxy (or Messier 82) has given me the most challenging headaches out of any other picture I’ve edited. As previously described, this Cigar Galaxy is made by combining black and white stills in Photoshop. To accomplish this, I used S-Curves for contrast then a soft brush to colorize the image. I remain discouraged due to the iconic center of the galaxy not being able to be seen. Due to my obsessive nature, I could not get over my failure to emphasize the starburst. Clearly, this was not my fault as I concluded through research that the Hydrogen alpha’s deep-red wavelength was unable to be captured by the telescope, but I had to do something to compensate. In this final edit, I emphasized the brightness and glow around the center of the galaxy to replace the burst that is typically there as well as slightly coloring the center to show where the burst would typically be. Other than that, I emphasized the stars, but personally I think I preferred my initial edit. I’m just glad I turned this image into something I think would fit in with sci-fi set pieces, because I could totally envision a starship battle circling this galaxy at the speed of sound. In an ideal world, I would do a final stack of my work in progress version and this version and take the best features of both for one image. This may be something I have to revisit in the future for my own completion satisfaction.

[chibinotan]

Visible Light Blue Stars

[startswithabang]

NASA Mission Links Star Birth And Galaxy Death As Never Before

“In 2019, NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) studied the Cigar Galaxy’s gas with unprecedented sensitivities. SOFIA observes at 41,000+ feet, avoiding 99% of atmospheric water vapor: infrared astronomy’s biggest nemesis. Researchers discovered its enormous galactic wind is aligned along internal magnetic field lines. Enormous quantities of gas and dust — upwards of 50,000,000 Suns — is being transported into intergalactic space, dragging the field with it.”

Starburst galaxies are rare, and only exist where an entire galaxy becomes an active star-forming region. The closest one is pretty close, though: just 12 million light-years away. It’s known as the Cigar Galaxy, Messier 82, and with novel instruments aboard an infrared telescope, scientists can reveal and study the relationship between new stars, matter transport, and magnetic fields. We’ve come so far in our understanding of galaxy evolution already, and with new sets of observations occurring in February and March of this year, we’re poised to take the next giant leap in understanding how forming new stars can lead to the death of a galaxy.

Our cosmic neighbor right next door is helping us understand how galaxies live and die. It’s a tremendous chance to learn something new about the Universe.