[The Desktop Project is my way of a) forcing me to write something every day by 2) posting a brief article about all the astronomical images I've collected on my computer's desktop. I'm actually getting ahead of the onslaught, so I'm thinking this week may see me catching up!] M82 is classified as an irregular galaxy -- that is, one that has no overall shape, but instead a weird, splotchy configuration. When you see a picture of it, you'll see why... and Adam Block of the Mt. Lemmon SkyCenter has a great one!
See what I mean? You can see an underlying galaxy there, but all that red stuff certainly makes it look, well, irregular. ... but wait a sec. If you look at just the galaxy (the blue stuff), it bears more than a striking resemblance to a run-of-the-mill -- if heavily warped -- edge-on spiral galaxy. And all ...
