Smoke in Space

I don't know why, but I always love seeing images of planets, stars and galaxies in space. I really like this one (emphasis mine):

...in M82 an irregular galaxy in Ursa Major located about 12,000 k light-years away. It is also known as the Cigar Galaxy.

In this image shows “smoke” surrounding the young swarm of massive stars that was known to exist. What wasn’t known was the smoke part, it took Spitzer’s infrared eyes to see that.

What makes up the “smoke”? According to the press release it is: polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon, can be found on Earth in tailpipes, barbecue pits and other places where combustion reactions have occurred. In galaxies, the stuff is created by stars, whose winds and radiation blow the material out into space.

Read the press release here.

Funny how the M82 turns out to have been aptly named the Cigar nebula.

You can also see a short video clip of this here.

If you're interested in this kind of stuff, be sure to check this out and read Tom's Astronomy Blog. It's really good!