Explanation: What's lighting up the Cigar Galaxy? M82, as this irregular galaxy is also known, was stirred up by a recent pass near large spiral galaxy M81. This doesn't fully explain the source of the red-glowing outwardly expanding gas, however. Evidence indicates that this gas is being driven out by the combined emerging particle winds of many stars, together creating a galactic superwind. The featured photographic mosaic highlights a specific color of red light strongly emitted by ionized hydrogen gas, showing detailed filaments of this gas. The filaments extend for over 10,000 light years. The 12-million light-year distant Cigar Galaxy is the brightest galaxy in the sky in infrared light, and can be seen in visible light with a small telescope towards the constellation of the Great Bear (Ursa Major).

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

Cool.

Wow

To say that is a lot of gas would be a total understatement.

I wonder if there was life on any planets before the gas, was there still life afterwards? What would all that gas look like if it happened here?

Very cool, thought-provoking picture and thank you for sharing this, as well as all the other space photos. I always enjoy them

The Universe is awesome!  Thanks for the pic.

Beautiful.

M81 and M82 make a nice pair in big binoculars.

Or in a relatively low power, wide field view of a telescope.

https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&site=imghp&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1920&bih=963&q=M81+m82&oq=M81+m82&gs_l=img.3..0j0i24.860.5103.0.5434.9.7.1.1.1.0.132.819.0j7.7.0....0...1ac.1.64.img..0.9.834.P607E6ca3N4#imgrc=_