APOD: The Cigar Galaxy from Hubble and Webb (2024 Apr 15)

[APOD Robot]

The Cigar Galaxy from Hubble and Webb

Explanation: Something strange happened to this galaxy, but what? Known as the Cigar Galaxy and cataloged as M82, red glowing gas and dust are being cast out from the center. Although this starburst galaxy was surely stirred up by a recent pass near its neighbor, large spiral galaxy M81, this doesn't fully explain the source of the red-glowing outwardly expanding gas and dust. Evidence indicates that this material is being driven out by the combined emerging particle winds of many stars, together creating a galactic superwind. In the featured images, a Hubble Space Telescope image in visible light is shown on the left, while a James Webb Space Telescope image of the central region in infrared light is shown on the right. Detailed inspection of the new Webb image shows, unexpectedly, that this red-glowing dust is associated with hot plasma. Research into the nature of this strange nearby galaxy will surely continue.

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[alex555]

There is, in the upper right part of the Webb image, something that looks like a globular cluster and which is completely invisible in the Hubble image. Impressive.

Alex

[Locutus76]

There is, in the upper right part of the Webb image, something that looks like a globular cluster and which is completely invisible in the Hubble image. Impressive.

Alex

Interesting… not even the enlarged Hubble image is sharp or detailed enough for me to notice any individual clusters, especially around the part that Webb zoomed in on. But maybe that’s just me. Are you sure you aren’t comparing Hubble’s entire image to the close up from Webb?

[Ann]

There is, in the upper right part of the Webb image, something that looks like a globular cluster and which is completely invisible in the Hubble image. Impressive.

Alex

Interesting… not even the enlarged Hubble image is sharp or detailed enough for me to notice any individual clusters, especially around the part that Webb zoomed in on. But maybe that’s just me. Are you sure you aren’t comparing Hubble’s entire image to the close up from Webb?

M82 is a very dusty galaxy. It is almost four magnitudes brighter in the far infrared than at blue wavelengths. Only very dusty galaxies show such a discrepancy between far infrared and blue wavelengths.

Because M82 is so dusty, Hubble simply can't peer inside. Here is Hubble's best effort (from 2001, and I don't know if Hubble revisited it):

The inset at left is by Hubble, and the inset at right is by NICMOS, an infrared instrument whose resolving power was nowhere near Webb's. Note that the field of view of these two telescopes does not include the very center of M82. Credit: NASA, ESA and R. De Grijs

---

A violent starburst is going on in the center of M82. JWST can peer through the dusty heart of the Cigar Galaxy and see clusters of stars inside:

The Cigar Galaxy from Hubble and Webb. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Alberto Bolatto (UMD)

---

The Hubble image shows M82 in its entirety (well, mostly), whereas the JWST image only shows the center of M82. All the bright white dots in the JWST image are star clusters, and the fainter dots are most likely individual stars. (Well, admittedly, there is a lonely-looking elongated white thing below center right that looks like a galaxy to me.)

APOD Robot wrote:

Although this starburst galaxy was surely stirred up by a recent pass near its neighbor, large spiral galaxy M81, this doesn't fully explain the source of the red-glowing outwardly expanding gas and dust. Evidence indicates that this material is being driven out by the combined emerging particle winds of many stars, together creating a galactic superwind.

Surely a number of supernovas popping off must have added to this superwind?

Ann

[johnnydeep]

The Hubble image shows M82 in its entirety (well, mostly), whereas the JWST image only shows the center of M82. All the bright white dots in the JWST image are star clusters, and the fainter dots are most likely individual stars. (Well, admittedly, there is a lonely-looking elongated white thing below center right that looks like a galaxy to me.)

How did you determine they don't show the same portion of M82? I have only been able to find info on the Hubble image, from the Instgram link provided:

mr.cosmic.wanderer
37w ago
Messier 82 (M82), also known as the Cigar Galaxy, is an edge-on starburst galaxy located in the constellation Ursa Major. The galaxy lies at a distance of 11.4 to 12.4 million light years from Earth and has an apparent magnitude of 8.41. It has the designation NGC 3034 in the New General Catalogue. The Cigar Galaxy occupies an area of 11.2 by 4.3 arc minutes of apparent sky, which corresponds to a linear diameter of about 37,000 light years. In small telescopes.

[AVAO]

[...]

Interesting… not even the enlarged Hubble image is sharp or detailed enough for me to notice any individual clusters, especially around the part that Webb zoomed in on. But maybe that’s just me. Are you sure you aren’t comparing Hubble’s entire image to the close up from Webb?

Yes. That is really the case!
slider

Click to view full size image

jac berne (flickr) artistic composit of different sources

larger picture

[AVAO]

There is, in the upper right part of the Webb image, something that looks like a globular cluster and which is completely invisible in the Hubble image. Impressive.

Alex

Interesting… not even the enlarged Hubble image is sharp or detailed enough for me to notice any individual clusters, especially around the part that Webb zoomed in on. But maybe that’s just me. Are you sure you aren’t comparing Hubble’s entire image to the close up from Webb?

M82 is a very dusty galaxy. It is almost four magnitudes brighter in the far infrared than at blue wavelengths. Only very dusty galaxies show such a discrepancy between far infrared and blue wavelengths.

Because M82 is so dusty, Hubble simply can't peer inside. Here is Hubble's best effort (from 2001, and I don't know if Hubble revisited it):

Theinset at left is by Hubble, and the inset at right is by NICMOS, an infrared instrument whose resolving power was nowhere near Webb's. Note that the field of view of these two telescopes does not include the very center of M82. Credit: NASA, ESA and R. De Grijs

---

A violent starburst is going on in the center of M82. JWST can peer through the dusty heart of the Cigar Galaxy and see clusters of stars inside:

The Cigar Galaxy from Hubble and Webb. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Alberto Bolatto (UMD)

---

The Hubble image shows M82 in its entirety (well, mostly), whereas the JWST image only shows the center of M82. All the bright white dots in the JWST image are star clusters, and the fainter dots are most likely individual stars. (Well, admittedly, there is a lonely-looking elongated white thing below center right that looks like a galaxy to me.)

APOD Robot wrote:

Although this starburst galaxy was surely stirred up by a recent pass near its neighbor, large spiral galaxy M81, this doesn't fully explain the source of the red-glowing outwardly expanding gas and dust. Evidence indicates that this material is being driven out by the combined emerging particle winds of many stars, together creating a galactic superwind.

Surely a number of supernovas popping off must have added to this superwind?

Ann

ThanX Ann

You may also know the great Deep Sky Collective:

Carl Björk - @Palmito, Thomas Bähnck - newhorizonobs (instagram), Oliver Carter - @Oliver Carter, Sascha Frei - @Usernamealreadytaken, Jake Gentillon - @jake_g, Richard Hall - @Richard, Tino Heuberger - @RononDex, Jason Jacks - @jmdl101, Travis Lecture - @SpaceIsWhack, Brian Meyers - @Brian M., Oskari Nikkinen - @Oskari Nikkinen, William Ostling - @William Ostling, Prashant Ranganath - @Prashant Ranganath, Tim Schaeffer - @Tim Schaeffer, Mark Shelton - @MARK Shelton, Felix Schöfbänker - @SomeAstroStuff and Berengar von Ow

Starting in February we had 6 people in the group, but the number quickly rose to now 17 people: 1 Editor, 1 person who gave us his Bortle 1 data for MSGR, and 15 photographers. By mid-April we had 173h 34min of broadband data and 243h 04min of Ha data which had us confident in realizing our goal. With 416h 38min of total integration gathered on the target, of which 393h 10min (or over 16 days) were effectively used, this also marks the longest integration time ever on M81/82, and the longest one-panel integration time on Astrobin!


What a worthy APOD for the future!
The whole story: https://www.astrobin.com/tb0sou/
ZOOM: https://theuberger.ch/post/astrophotogr ... 82-collab/

Click to view full size image

Click to view full size image

Source: https://theuberger.ch/post/astrophotogr ... 82-collab/

[johnnydeep]

The Hubble image shows M82 in its entirety (well, mostly), whereas the JWST image only shows the center of M82. All the bright white dots in the JWST image are star clusters, and the fainter dots are most likely individual stars. (Well, admittedly, there is a lonely-looking elongated white thing below center right that looks like a galaxy to me.)

How did you determine they don't show the same portion of M82? I have only been able to find info on the Hubble image, from the Instgram link provided:

mr.cosmic.wanderer
37w ago
Messier 82 (M82), also known as the Cigar Galaxy, is an edge-on starburst galaxy located in the constellation Ursa Major. The galaxy lies at a distance of 11.4 to 12.4 million light years from Earth and has an apparent magnitude of 8.41. It has the designation NGC 3034 in the New General Catalogue. The Cigar Galaxy occupies an area of 11.2 by 4.3 arc minutes of apparent sky, which corresponds to a linear diameter of about 37,000 light years. In small telescopes.

Replying to myself, after reading AVAO's slider link - https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration ... born_stars

To confirm that indeed, the JWST image shows a much smaller part of the center of M82:

Click to view full size image

...Which, now that I read Ann's post again, she had already posted! Argh! And it's even the APOD image itself! Double argh! How in the Pandemonium did I not notice that??!!!

[Ann]

You may also know the great Deep Sky Collective:

Carl Björk - @Palmito, Thomas Bähnck - newhorizonobs (instagram), Oliver Carter - @Oliver Carter, Sascha Frei - @Usernamealreadytaken, Jake Gentillon - @jake_g, Richard Hall - @Richard, Tino Heuberger - @RononDex, Jason Jacks - @jmdl101, Travis Lecture - @SpaceIsWhack, Brian Meyers - @Brian M., Oskari Nikkinen - @Oskari Nikkinen, William Ostling - @William Ostling, Prashant Ranganath - @Prashant Ranganath, Tim Schaeffer - @Tim Schaeffer, Mark Shelton - @MARK Shelton, Felix Schöfbänker - @SomeAstroStuff and Berengar von Ow

Starting in February we had 6 people in the group, but the number quickly rose to now 17 people: 1 Editor, 1 person who gave us his Bortle 1 data for MSGR, and 15 photographers. By mid-April we had 173h 34min of broadband data and 243h 04min of Ha data which had us confident in realizing our goal. With 416h 38min of total integration gathered on the target, of which 393h 10min (or over 16 days) were effectively used, this also marks the longest integration time ever on M81/82, and the longest one-panel integration time on Astrobin!


What a worthy APOD for the future!
The whole story: https://www.astrobin.com/tb0sou/
ZOOM: https://theuberger.ch/post/astrophotogr ... 82-collab/

Click to view full size image

Click to view full size image

Source: https://theuberger.ch/post/astrophotogr ... 82-collab/

Amazing, Jac, what fantastic images!! Are you a part of the 16 (now 17) people who have gathered 173h 34min of broadband data and 243h 04min of Ha data of M82? Amazing!! Which of the names is yours?

I checked the humongously large picture of M82 and found that "the blue stream" is resolved into blue stars. It had to be like that. Only two things in the nearby universe are blue: 1) direct or scattered starlight from hot stars, and 2) possibly OIII emission, particularly if it is mixed with some blue starlight.

Oh, and yes, I forgot that ion tails of comets are also blue!

Ann

[MoonRockMan]

"shows, unexpectedly, that this red-glowing dust is associated with hot plasma."

Is it unexpected because there is plasma inside stars, but this is plasma dust in between stars, as if chunks of plasma were blown out of stars?

[Chris Peterson]

"shows, unexpectedly, that this red-glowing dust is associated with hot plasma."

Is it unexpected because there is plasma inside stars, but this is plasma dust in between stars, as if chunks of plasma were blown out of stars?

Plasma is just highly ionized gas. That is, a mix of neutral atoms, ions, and electrons. It can't exist in "chunks". Space is full of plasma regions (like all those glowing emission nebulas we see here).

[johnnydeep]

"shows, unexpectedly, that this red-glowing dust is associated with hot plasma."

Is it unexpected because there is plasma inside stars, but this is plasma dust in between stars, as if chunks of plasma were blown out of stars?

Plasma is just highly ionized gas. That is, a mix of neutral atoms, ions, and electrons. It can't exist in "chunks". Space is full of plasma regions (like all those glowing emission nebulas we see here).

That's all well and good, but why is this particular red dust "unexpected"? if it because most red dust is NOT associated with hot plasma?

[Ann]

"shows, unexpectedly, that this red-glowing dust is associated with hot plasma."

Is it unexpected because there is plasma inside stars, but this is plasma dust in between stars, as if chunks of plasma were blown out of stars?

Plasma is just highly ionized gas. That is, a mix of neutral atoms, ions, and electrons. It can't exist in "chunks". Space is full of plasma regions (like all those glowing emission nebulas we see here).

That's all well and good, but why is this particular red dust "unexpected"? if it because most red dust is NOT associated with hot plasma?

Dust is produced during "violence processes" in space. Star formation creates dust. High-mass stars create dust even during their main sequence life time, if there is gas in the vicinity. High-mass stars create a lot of dust during their gianthood period. Supernovas create a large amount of dust.

It is the starburst in M82 that creates such a large amount of dust in this galaxy. But the dust is not "red". It is brown, as is typical of dust. The red color is due to hydrogen alpha, as a lot of ionized (and therefore red) gas is being blown out of M82 due to the galaxy's superwind.

The ionized gas is red, but the dust is brown.

Ann

[MoonRockMan]

Thanks for the answers and insight!

[johnnydeep]

Plasma is just highly ionized gas. That is, a mix of neutral atoms, ions, and electrons. It can't exist in "chunks". Space is full of plasma regions (like all those glowing emission nebulas we see here).

That's all well and good, but why is this particular red dust "unexpected"? if it because most red dust is NOT associated with hot plasma?

Dust is produced during "violence processes" in space. Star formation creates dust. High-mass stars create dust even during their main sequence life time, if there is gas in the vicinity. High-mass stars create a lot of dust during their gianthood period. Supernovas create a large amount of dust.

It is the starburst in M82 that creates such a large amount of dust in this galaxy. But the dust is not "red". It is brown, as is typical of dust. The red color is due to hydrogen alpha, as a lot of ionized (and therefore red) gas is being blown out of M82 due to the galaxy's superwind.

The ionized gas is red, but the dust is brown.

Ann

Ok, I must be a moron, but again to what does "unexpectedly, that this red-glowing dust is associated with hot plasma" refer, and why is it unexpected?

[VictorBorun]

[...]

Interesting… not even the enlarged Hubble image is sharp or detailed enough for me to notice any individual clusters, especially around the part that Webb zoomed in on. But maybe that’s just me. Are you sure you aren’t comparing Hubble’s entire image to the close up from Webb?

Yes. That is really the case!
slider

Click to view full size image

jac berne (flickr) artistic composit of different sources

larger picture

To my eye all the dust looks very 3d, like a pair of wide cones illuminated by the disk and by the core; the cone that is below the disk is partly in front of the disk and is seen backlighted there.

By the way, is there an active central black hole? Or is this pair of dust jets being powered only by joint effort of large stars and supernovas?

[Ann]

That's all well and good, but why is this particular red dust "unexpected"? if it because most red dust is NOT associated with hot plasma?

Dust is produced during "violence processes" in space. Star formation creates dust. High-mass stars create dust even during their main sequence life time, if there is gas in the vicinity. High-mass stars create a lot of dust during their gianthood period. Supernovas create a large amount of dust.

It is the starburst in M82 that creates such a large amount of dust in this galaxy. But the dust is not "red". It is brown, as is typical of dust. The red color is due to hydrogen alpha, as a lot of ionized (and therefore red) gas is being blown out of M82 due to the galaxy's superwind.

The ionized gas is red, but the dust is brown.

Ann

Ok, I must be a moron, but again to what does "unexpectedly, that this red-glowing dust is associated with hot plasma" refer, and why is it unexpected?

My off the cuff answer was, The red stuff is not unexpected. D'uh.

My second thought was, Wait. How often do we see this kind of rather extreme superwind from the core of a galaxy? What other even slightly similar galaxies can you think of? Hmm.....

M106 is famous for an extra pair of arms that are visible in X-rays, radio and optical light. Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Caltech/P.Ogle et al; Optical: NASA/STScI & R.Gendler; IR: NASA/JPL-Caltech; Radio: NSF/NRAO/VLA

---

There is an outflow of gas from the core of NGC 1808 due to a burst of star formation in the galaxy's center. Credit: Jim Flood, an amateur astronomer affiliated with Sperry Observatory at Union College in New Jersey, and Max Mutchler, a member of the Space Telescope Science Institute staff who volunteered to work with Jim

---

M106 and NGC 1808 are examples of galaxies with outflows from their centers.

I'm not prepared to talk about the extra arms of M106, because I don't really understand them (yes, I've heard about the water masers, d'uh), but the dusty starburst cores of M82 and NGC 1808 may be little brothers or sisters of the infrared monsters of the cosmos, the Luminous, Ultra Luminous or Hyper Luminous Infrared Galaxies.

Arp 220 is an ultraluminous infrared galaxy. The image was taken by the James Webb Telescope. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, K. Pontoppidan (STScI), A. Pagan (STScI)

---

Wikipedia wrote:

Luminous infrared galaxies or LIRGs are galaxies with luminosities, the measurement of brightness, above 10¹¹ L_☉. They are also referred to as submillimeter galaxies (SMGs) through their normal method of detection. LIRGs are more abundant than starburst galaxies, Seyfert galaxies and quasi-stellar objects at comparable luminosity. Infrared galaxies emit more energy in the infrared than at all other wavelengths combined. A LIRG's luminosity is 100 billion times that of the Sun.

Wikipedia wrote:

Infrared galaxies appear to be single, gas-rich spirals whose infrared luminosity is created largely by the formation of stars within them...

LIRGs are brighter in the infrared than in the optical spectrum because the visible light is absorbed by the high amounts of gas and dust, and the dust re-emits thermal energy in the infrared spectrum.

I said before that starbirth creates dust, but according to an illustration I found dust is mostly created in aging stars, in dying red giants and in supernovas. But a violent starburst will soon give rise to many supernovas and thus to a lot of dust production.

Dust production and recycled dust in the universe. Source: Herschel Space Observatory.

---

I've got to show you an infrared picture of M82 and its neighbor, M81. In this infrared image, cool stars are shown as blue, and dust is shown as red:

The dust in M82 (top) makes the entire galaxy shine golden. M81, by contrast, contains only small amounts of dust. The small blue object with a small yellow core in the lower left corner is NGC 3077. Overall, NGC 3077 is not very dusty. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLACredit

---

Clearly M82 is an unusual case, because if it wasn't, we'd see many more galaxies like it.

Ann

[Ann]

[...]

Interesting… not even the enlarged Hubble image is sharp or detailed enough for me to notice any individual clusters, especially around the part that Webb zoomed in on. But maybe that’s just me. Are you sure you aren’t comparing Hubble’s entire image to the close up from Webb?

Yes. That is really the case!
slider

Click to view full size image

jac berne (flickr) artistic composit of different sources

larger picture

To my eye all the dust looks very 3d, like a pair of wide cones illuminated by the disk and by the core; the cone that is below the disk is partly in front of the disk and is seen backlighted there.

By the way, is there an active central black hole? Or is this pair of dust jets being powered only by joint effort of large stars and supernovas?

There is not a central supermassive black hole in M82, but there may be a number of stellar mass black holes.

M82 in X-rays. Credit: NASA/CXC/Wesleyan/R.Kilgard et al.

---

Chandra Space Telescope wrote:

M82 is seen nearly edge-on with its disk crossing from about 10 o'clock to about 4 o'clock in this image from Chandra (where low, medium, and high-energy X-rays are colored red, green, and blue respectively.) Among the 104 point-like X-ray sources in the image, eight so far have been observed to be very bright in X-rays and undergo clear changes in brightness over periods of weeks and years. This means they are excellent candidates to be black holes pulling material from companion stars that are much more massive than the Sun. Only a handful of such binary systems are known in the Local Group of galaxies containing the Milky Way and M31.

Chandra has shown that supernovas play an important role in blowing the red outflows of M82:

Chandra observations are also important in understanding the rapid rate at which supernovas explode in starburst galaxies like M82. When the shock waves travel through the galaxy, they push on giant clouds of gas and dust, which causes them to collapse and form massive stars. These stars, in turn, use up their fuel quickly and explode as supernovas. These supernovas produce expanding bubbles of multimillion-degree gas that extend for millions light years away from the galaxy's disk. These bubbles are seen as the large red areas to the upper right and lower left of the image.

So indeed, the outflows of M82 seem to be powered by stellar winds from massive stars and supernovas.

Ann

[johnnydeep]

Dust is produced during "violence processes" in space. Star formation creates dust. High-mass stars create dust even during their main sequence life time, if there is gas in the vicinity. High-mass stars create a lot of dust during their gianthood period. Supernovas create a large amount of dust.

It is the starburst in M82 that creates such a large amount of dust in this galaxy. But the dust is not "red". It is brown, as is typical of dust. The red color is due to hydrogen alpha, as a lot of ionized (and therefore red) gas is being blown out of M82 due to the galaxy's superwind.

The ionized gas is red, but the dust is brown.

Ann

Ok, I must be a moron, but again to what does "unexpectedly, that this red-glowing dust is associated with hot plasma" refer, and why is it unexpected?

My off the cuff answer was, The red stuff is not unexpected. D'uh.

My second thought was, Wait. How often do we see this kind of rather extreme superwind from the core of a galaxy? What other even slightly similar galaxies can you think of? Hmm.....

M106 is famous for an extra pair of arms that are visible in X-rays, radio and optical light. Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Caltech/P.Ogle et al; Optical: NASA/STScI & R.Gendler; IR: NASA/JPL-Caltech; Radio: NSF/NRAO/VLA

---

There is an outflow of gas from the core of NGC 1808 due to a burst of star formation in the galaxy's center. Credit: Jim Flood, an amateur astronomer affiliated with Sperry Observatory at Union College in New Jersey, and Max Mutchler, a member of the Space Telescope Science Institute staff who volunteered to work with Jim

---

M106 and NGC 1808 are examples of galaxies with outflows from their centers.

I'm not prepared to talk about the extra arms of M106, because I don't really understand them (yes, I've heard about the water masers, d'uh), but the dusty starburst cores of M82 and NGC 1808 may be little brothers or sisters of the infrared monsters of the cosmos, the Luminous, Ultra Luminous or Hyper Luminous Infrared Galaxies.

Arp 220 is an ultraluminous infrared galaxy. The image was taken by the James Webb Telescope. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, K. Pontoppidan (STScI), A. Pagan (STScI)

---

Wikipedia wrote:

Luminous infrared galaxies or LIRGs are galaxies with luminosities, the measurement of brightness, above 10¹¹ L_☉. They are also referred to as submillimeter galaxies (SMGs) through their normal method of detection. LIRGs are more abundant than starburst galaxies, Seyfert galaxies and quasi-stellar objects at comparable luminosity. Infrared galaxies emit more energy in the infrared than at all other wavelengths combined. A LIRG's luminosity is 100 billion times that of the Sun.

Wikipedia wrote:

Infrared galaxies appear to be single, gas-rich spirals whose infrared luminosity is created largely by the formation of stars within them...

LIRGs are brighter in the infrared than in the optical spectrum because the visible light is absorbed by the high amounts of gas and dust, and the dust re-emits thermal energy in the infrared spectrum.

I said before that starbirth creates dust, but according to an illustration I found dust is mostly created in aging stars, in dying red giants and in supernovas. But a violent starburst will soon give rise to many supernovas and thus to a lot of dust production.

Dust production and recycled dust in the universe. Source: Herschel Space Observatory.

---

I've got to show you an infrared picture of M82 and its neighbor, M81. In this infrared image, cool stars are shown as blue, and dust is shown as red:

The dust in M82 (top) makes the entire galaxy shine golden. M81, by contrast, contains only small amounts of dust. The small blue object with a small yellow core in the lower left corner is NGC 3077. Overall, NGC 3077 is not very dusty. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLACredit

---

Clearly M82 is an unusual case, because if it wasn't, we'd see many more galaxies like it.

Ann

Ok. Still not really sure what the APOD text was implying, but I'll take it to mean - rightly or wrongly - that it's unusual for red dust to be associated (which I'll take to mean 'accompanied') by hot plasma. Time to move on.

[VictorBorun]

The dust in M82 (top) makes the entire galaxy shine golden. M81, by contrast, contains only small amounts of dust. The small blue object with a small yellow core in the lower left corner is NGC 3077. Overall, NGC 3077 is not very dusty. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLACredit

---

Clearly M82 is an unusual case, because if it wasn't, we'd see many more galaxies like it.

Ann

Looks like the Milky Way, Andromeda and the Triangulum but M82 the Cigar is passing through a baby boom phase right now and NGC 3077 is "a small disrupted elliptical galaxy" rather than a small spiral one.

[Ann]

The dust in M82 (top) makes the entire galaxy shine golden. M81, by contrast, contains only small amounts of dust. The small blue object with a small yellow core in the lower left corner is NGC 3077. Overall, NGC 3077 is not very dusty. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLACredit

---

Clearly M82 is an unusual case, because if it wasn't, we'd see many more galaxies like it.

Ann

Looks like the Milky Way, Andromeda and the Triangulum but M82 the Cigar is passing through a baby boom phase right now and NGC 3077 is "a small disrupted elliptical galaxy" rather than a small spiral one.

Well, there are some similarities!

Ann

[VictorBorun]

The dust in M82 (top) makes the entire galaxy shine golden. M81, by contrast, contains only small amounts of dust. The small blue object with a small yellow core in the lower left corner is NGC 3077. Overall, NGC 3077 is not very dusty. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLACredit

---

Clearly M82 is an unusual case, because if it wasn't, we'd see many more galaxies like it.

Ann

Looks like the Milky Way, Andromeda and the Triangulum but M82 the Cigar is passing through a baby boom phase right now and NGC 3077 is "a small disrupted elliptical galaxy" rather than a small spiral one.

Well, there are some similarities!

Ann

...
I try to fit Spitzer's IR image of 0.2°to WISE panorama IR of 1.5°

Click to view full size image 1 or image 2

https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Imag ... alaxy_M_82

[VictorBorun]

[...]

Interesting… not even the enlarged Hubble image is sharp or detailed enough for me to notice any individual clusters, especially around the part that Webb zoomed in on. But maybe that’s just me. Are you sure you aren’t comparing Hubble’s entire image to the close up from Webb?

Yes. That is really the case!
slider

Click to view full size image

jac berne (flickr) artistic composit of different sources

larger picture

can you please give that image without Webb's overlay, too?

[AVAO]

[...]

Interesting… not even the enlarged Hubble image is sharp or detailed enough for me to notice any individual clusters, especially around the part that Webb zoomed in on. But maybe that’s just me. Are you sure you aren’t comparing Hubble’s entire image to the close up from Webb?

Yes. That is really the case!
slider

Click to view full size image

jac berne (flickr) artistic composit of different sources

larger picture

can you please give that image without Webb's overlay, too?

I also like microquasars with pigtails

Click to view full size image 1 or image 2

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/536 ... 5736_o.jpg
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/536 ... 7891_o.jpg

Click to view full size image

https://www3.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de/staff/ab ... sn-en.html

[Ann]

I also like microquasars with pigtails

Click to view full size image 1 or image 2

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/536 ... 5736_o.jpg
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/536 ... 7891_o.jpg

Click to view full size image

https://www3.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de/staff/ab ... sn-en.html

Superb images as always, Jac!

Ann