Located 12 millions light years away in the constellation Ursa Major, Bode’s Galaxy is a grand design spiral with prominent, well-defined arms extending around the entire galaxy. The distorted dust lanes above its nucleus are evidence of a billion-year gravitational dance with its smaller neighbor, the Cigar Galaxy.
The Cigar Galaxy also bears scars from these interactions, most notably the red jets of ionized hydrogen blasting from its core. These starburst regions create new stars at ten times the normal rate, generating enough infrared energy to make the Cigar Galaxy the brightest infrared source in the entire sky.
Many of these new stars are extremely massive, which means they’ll quickly burn through their hydrogen fuel, then will ignite helium, carbon, and oxygen until they eventually collapse under their own gravitational pressure and explode as supernovae, ejecting heavy elements into space at speeds of millions of miles per hour. It is this process that seeds the universe with the chemical elements necessary for life.
