Messier 82 (M82), also known as the Cigar Galaxy, is a starburst galaxy situated about 12 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Ursa Major. It was discovered by Johann Elert Bode in 1774 and later catalogued by Charles Messier in 1781. Other designations for this galaxy are NGC 3034, UGC 5322, and Arp 337.
Seen edge-on from our perspective, M82 exhibits intense star-forming activity, likely triggered by gravitational interactions with its nearby neighbour, Messier 81. These encounters have channeled vast amounts of gas towards its central region, resulting in a burst of star formation at a rate far exceeding that of typical galaxies.
The core of M82 radiates brightly, particularly in the infrared, due to the dense concentration of young, massive stars and large quantities of gas and dust. Its overall luminosity is several times greater than that of the Milky Way.
Image Acquisition
I have captured images of M82 on several occasions in the past, though always using RGB colour. For this image, I incorporated a substantial amount of hydrogen-alpha exposure in order to better highlight the radiation emerging from the core of the galaxy.
The image was taken using a Takahashi TOA-150 telescope and an SBIG STL-1000M camera, with Astrodon filters. The total accumulated exposure time is 46 hours.
Image Processing
The image was processed with PixInsight 1.9.3. Colour calibration was performed using the SpectrophotometricColorCalibration tool, with an Sa-type galaxy selected as the white reference.
Notable processing steps include the use of BlurXTerminator, star separation (with the stars processed independently using MaskedStretch to better preserve their colour), and a final enhancement using the MultiscaleMedianTransform tool for subtle sharpening.
Click on the image for a full resolution version, or go to the Gallery section for complete exposure details.
Image processing: Pixinsight.
Observatory automation and remote operation with Talon6.
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