The Cigar

The cigar galaxy or M82 galaxy is remarkable for its star formation activity. Around the galaxy's center, young stars are being born 10 times faster than they are inside our entire galaxy Milky Way. M82 and its neighbor M81 were discovered by German astronomer Johann Elert Bode in 1774. It is 12 million light years away from Earth. It is situated in constellation Ursa Major (The Great Bear). It is the nearest place to us where the conditions are similar to those in the early universe. One of the black holes is also located at a projected distance of 290 light years from the center of galaxy M82 galaxy and its mass is estimated to be between 12,000 to 43,000 times the mass of our Sun. It is just a fantastic galaxy ,which is compared to Cigar, to be known.