M82 — also known as the Cigar Galaxy — and neighboring M81 (see #92), together make up one of the night sky’s dynamic duos. M82 is one of the closest (12 million light-years) examples of an edge-on system in starburst chaos. In images, it appears like an extragalactic radical, with spiked “hairs” bristling off a cigar-shaped body tattooed with invisible dark matter.
German astronomer Johann Elert Bode discovered this “nebulous patch” on the same night