Let’s get to the heart of the matter: starburst galaxy M82.
A team of researchers recently completed an imaging survey of this edge-on spiral galaxy with the James Webb Space Telescope. Because of its infrared sensitivity, the telescope was able to see beyond the thick dust and resolve the central region of M82—revealing the galaxy’s distended disk structure and 16.5 million individual stars for the first time. Webb’s ability to resolve so many stars paves a way for astronomers to reconstruct M82’s star formation history, and more broadly, understand how the galaxy has evolved over time.
This Webb survey is the most recent addition to the overall data on M82. Multiple space observatories, such as the Hubble Space Telescope, have previously studied this intriguing environment. Each telescope offers a different view of M82: Hubble’s visible-light view shows the galaxy’s gas and dust structure, which conceals the features that are prominent in Webb’s infrared-light image.
To understand an intricate environment like M82, including its formation history, astronomers analyze data from various missions to obtain the fuller picture: https://news.stsci.edu/4xKw0MA
