Celestial Objects
Cigar Galaxy
Galaxies
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The Cigar Galaxy, catalogued as Messier 82 and also designated NGC 3034, is a starburst galaxy about 12 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major and the second-largest member of the M81 Group. It is roughly five times more luminous than the Milky Way, with a central region about a hundred times more luminous still, activity thought to have been triggered by gravitational interaction with its neighbor Bode's Galaxy; a Type Ia supernova, SN 2014J, was observed there in January 2014, and in the same year astronomers studying the galaxy discovered the brightest pulsar then known, designated M82 X-2.
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