Located just above the bowl of the Big Dipper Ursa Major, the spectacular irregular galaxy M82 lies about 12 million light-years from us. It is faintly visible through binoculars on a dark moonless night, and lies close to another bright galaxy, M81 (featured in the 2003 calendar for May).

These two galaxies form an interacting pair - several times in the not-too-distant past (the last being about 100 million years ago) these galaxies passed close to one another. For M82, the last pass produced a dramatic increase in the rate at which stars form, a "starburst," which has caused rapid winds of gas and dust to pour from the center of this galaxy.