Happy Sweet Sixteen, Hubble Telescope! – Starburst Galaxy M82

Happy Sweet Sixteen, Hubble Telescope! – Starburst Galaxy M82

To celebrate the Hubble Space Telescope's 16 years of success, the two space agencies involved in the project, NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), are releasing this image of the magnificent starburst galaxy, Messier 82 (M82). This mosaic image is the sharpest wide-angle view ever obtained of M82. The galaxy is remarkable for its bright blue disk, webs of shredded clouds, and fiery-looking plumes of glowing hydrogen blasting out of its central regions.

Throughout the galaxy's center, young stars are being born 10 times faster than they are inside our entire Milky Way Galaxy. The resulting huge concentration of young stars carved into the gas and dust at the galaxy's center. The fierce galactic superwind generated from these stars compresses enough gas to make millions of more stars.

In M82, young stars are crammed into tiny but massive star clusters. These, in turn, congregate by the dozens to make the bright patches, or "starburst clumps," in the central parts of M82. The clusters in the clumps can only be distinguished in the sharp Hubble images. Most of the pale, white objects sprinkled around the body of M82 that look like fuzzy stars are actually individual star clusters about 20 light-years across and contain up to a million stars.

The rapid rate of star formation in this galaxy eventually will be self-limiting. When star formation becomes too vigorous, it will consume or destroy the material needed to make more stars. The starburst then will subside, probably in a few tens of millions of years.

Located 12 million light-years away, M82 appears high in the northern spring sky in the direction of the constellation Ursa Major, the Great Bear. It is also called the "Cigar Galaxy" because of the elliptical shape produced by the oblique tilt of its starry disk relative to our line of sight.

The observation was made in March 2006, with the Advanced Camera for Surveys' Wide Field Channel. Astronomers assembled this six-image composite mosaic by combining exposures taken with four colored filters that capture starlight from visible and infrared wavelengths as well as the light from the glowing hydrogen filaments.

Hubble was launched on April 24, 1990, aboard the space shuttle Discovery.

Credits

NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA);
Acknowledgment: J. Gallagher (University of Wisconsin), M. Mountain (STScI), and P. Puxley (National Science Foundation)

About The Object
Object Name M82, NGC 3034
Object Description Starburst Galaxy
R.A. Position 09h 55m 52.0s
Dec. Position 69° 40' 48.99"
Constellation Ursa Major
Distance 12 million light-years (3.7 Megaparsecs)
Dimensions This image is roughly 7.9 arcminutes (28,000 light-years or 8,500 parsecs) wide.
About The Data
Data Description This image was created from HST data from proposal M. Mountain (STScI), J. Gallagher (University of Wisconsin-Madison), P. Puxley (NSF), K. Noll, H. Bond, C. Christian, L. Frattare, F. Hamilton, Z. Levay, M. Mutchler, W. Januszewski, and T. Royle (Hubble Heritage Team/STScI/AURA). Note: Announcement page with release information on High Level Science Products for M82 (combined and mosaiced fits files for each filter) is available at the
Instrument HST>ACS/WFC
Exposure Dates March 27-29, 2006, Exposure Time: 13.7 hours
Filters F435W (B), F555W (V), F658N (H alpha), and F814W (I)
About The Image
Color Info This image is a composite of many separate exposures made by the ACS instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope using several different filters. Three filters sample broad wavelength ranges, one isolates the light of hydrogen. The color results from assigning different hues (colors) to each monochromatic image. In this case, the assigned colors are: Blue: F435W (B) Green: F555W (V) Red-orange: F658N (H alpha) Red: F814W (I)
Compass Image Happy Sweet Sixteen, Hubble Telescope! – Starburst Galaxy M82
About The Object
Object Name A name or catalog number that astronomers use to identify an astronomical object.
Object Description The type of astronomical object.
R.A. Position Right ascension – analogous to longitude – is one component of an object's position.
Dec. Position Declination – analogous to latitude – is one component of an object's position.
Constellation One of 88 recognized regions of the celestial sphere in which the object appears.
Distance The physical distance from Earth to the astronomical object. Distances within our solar system are usually measured in Astronomical Units (AU). Distances between stars are usually measured in light-years. Interstellar distances can also be measured in parsecs.
Dimensions The physical size of the object or the apparent angle it subtends on the sky.
About The Data
Data Description
  • Proposal: A description of the observations, their scientific justification, and the links to the data available in the science archive.
  • Science Team: The astronomers who planned the observations and analyzed the data. "PI" refers to the Principal Investigator.
Instrument The science instrument used to produce the data.
Exposure Dates The date(s) that the telescope made its observations and the total exposure time.
Filters The camera filters that were used in the science observations.
About The Image
Image Credit The primary individuals and institutions responsible for the content.
Publication Date The date and time the release content became public.
Color Info A brief description of the methods used to convert telescope data into the color image being presented.
Orientation The rotation of the image on the sky with respect to the north pole of the celestial sphere.

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