Disk of M82

A portion of M82's bluish disk, largely composed of young, hot stars. Numerous bright blue-white star-forming clumps and wisps of darker, cooler dust and gas appear superimposed on the disk.

About the colours

This image is a composite of many separate exposures made by the ACS instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope using several different filters. Three filters sample broad wavelength ranges, one isolates the light of hydrogen. The color results from assigning different hues (colors) to each monochromatic image. In this case, the assigned colors are: Blue: F435W (B) Green: F555W (V) Red-orange: F658N (H alpha) Red: F814W (I)

About the data

This image was created from HST data from proposal 10776 M. Mountain (STScI), J. Gallagher (University of Wisconsin-Madison), P. Puxley (NSF), K. Noll, H. Bond, C. Christian, L. Frattare, F. Hamilton, Z. Levay, M. Mutchler, W. Januszewski, and T. Royle (Hubble Heritage Team/STScI/AURA).

Note: Announcement page with release information on High Level Science Products for M82 (combined and mosaiced fits files for each filter) is available at the MAST Archive