Starship Asterisk*

Hello M82

They do not mention the reason why it is so active.

I think there are multiple black holes drriving the starbursts.

The filaments look like they are over 20,000 light years.

I imagine some of the dust [b]is[/b] in front of M82, certainly, being an extended, three-dimensional object. However, what you're seeing is probably an artifact of how the image was produced: it's two images, a visible-light picture of M82, with an infrared picture of the M82 dust clouds overlaid on top of it.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060425.html
Is it just me or does the dust look like it's in front of M82?Could it be that M 82 will become an elliptical eventually?
Orin