M81 (Bode's Galaxy) and M82 (the Cigar Galaxy) lie in Ursa Major, about 12 million light years away, and are the two main members of a bound group of galaxies. On the sky they sit less than a degree apart: they fit in the same frame.
M81 is a textbook spiral, with regular arms and a bright core. M82 is the opposite: we see it edge-on, distorted and crossed by dark dust. A close encounter with M81, a few hundred million years ago, compressed its gas and lit a furious burst of star formation — ten times more intense than our own galaxy's.
The result shows in the third image: a reddish jet of hydrogen streams out of M82's centre, gas driven away by the winds and supernova explosions of newly born stars. A galaxy literally losing pieces from overwork.
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