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Old 02-June-2008, 04:40 PM
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Tim Thompson Tim Thompson is offline
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Lightbulb M81 & M82

On your Recently Added photos page the caption for M82 reads: "The image below is of the irregular galaxy M82 (NGC3034) in Ursa Major, the field neighbor to the larger spiral galaxy M81, though four time further away from us." M81 & M82 are in fact at nearly the same distance (about 11,830,000 LY & 12,710,000 LY respectively) and are an interacting pair. M82 passed through M81 about 600,000,000 years ago. Very deep exposures show a bridge of intergalactic stars connecting the two galaxies (Sun, et al., 2005; de Mello, et al., 2008).
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