'Smoky' cigar galaxy

I hate to add more fire to the Flame Trench today, but a new picture taken by the Spitzer Space Telescope shows that where there's fire, there's smoke. The Cigar Galaxy, or Messier 82, is surrounded by "smoky dust," revealed for the first time by the telescope's infrared array camera. The material contains polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon, described delightfully by the Spitzer folks as the same "smelly molecule" linked to tailpipes and barbecue pits. Astronomers think the "smoke" comes from stars throughout the galaxy, which is rife with star formation. The smoky cloud in Spitzer's picture extends 20,000 light years from the galactic plane. It isn't seen in the visible-light photo on the left in this picture, shown for comparison, which comes from the National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Arizona.