Cigar Galaxy (M82)

This galaxy is making new stars about ten times faster than ours, and the leftovers are blasting out of the top and bottom in huge plumes — it is having the busiest time of its life!

Also called: M82.

🕒 When can I see it?🚀 Travel there

Cigar Galaxy (M82) — Drawn, not photographed.

What it is

Starburst galaxy forming stars roughly 10x faster than the Milky Way, next to Bode's Galaxy.

Starburst galaxy: Making stars far faster than it can keep up. Every kind of thing there is →

How to find the Cigar Galaxy

Look in the constellation Ursa Major.

It is best placed in the spring if you are north of the equator.

Shares the same patch of sky as M81; not visible from most of the Southern Hemisphere.

Star-hop: A bright cigar-shaped sliver in a 4-6 inch scope.

Finding it: Right beside Bode's Galaxy, an easy add-on when you already have that in view.

The Planetarium works out where it actually is from your own place and the date — including whether it is above the horizon at all tonight.

Show me the Cigar Galaxy in tonight's sky

What you will really see

With binoculars

Binoculars show it as a small, soft, grey patch. Not the photograph — and unlike the photograph, it is arriving in your eyes right now.

Through a small telescope, on a good night

A faint fuzzy oval of soft light — the bright core shows; the arms only hint at themselves.

🔭 See it drawn as it looks through a telescope

🖨️ A sheet to print for this

🖨️ Print a sheet and go and look

🖨️ Sheet to take outside →

Worth knowing about the Cigar Galaxy

On that same scale, the Cigar Galaxy would be about 12 kilometers away, right next to Bode's Galaxy. Light takes 12.0 million years to get here from the Cigar Galaxy, so what you are looking at is the Cigar Galaxy as it was 12.0 million years ago.

What it is made of: A starburst galaxy forming new stars at an extreme rate, packed into a small, cigar-shaped disc.
What makes it worth knowing: Making new stars roughly 10x faster than the Milky Way; powerful 'superwinds' of hot gas blast out of the disc, visible as red plumes. The gravitational squeeze from M81 is thought to be the trigger.

How did anyone measure the Earth in the first place?

The numbers