A Grand Design Spiral, and Its Neighbor

Bode's Galaxy (Messier 81) is a grand design spiral galaxy in Ursa Major, about 12 million light-years away, with well-defined sweeping spiral arms that make it one of the most photographed galaxies in the night sky. Sharing the frame beside it is the Cigar Galaxy (Messier 82), a smaller starburst galaxy undergoing intense star formation, driven by repeated close gravitational encounters with M81 over the past few hundred million years. The two sit less than a degree apart in the sky, close enough to capture together in a single wide-field shot.