Is M82 actually cigar shaped, or do we have an edge-on view of it? I’m not comfortable flipping it off as a cigar shape. At only 12 million lightyears away, I think we should be a little more courteous and respectful to it.
M82 was believed to be an irregular galaxy. In 2005, however, two symmetric spiral arms were discovered in near-infrared (NIR) images of M82. [...] Even though the arms were detected in NIR images, they are bluer than the disk. The arms had been missed due to M82's high disk surface brightness, the nearly edge-on view of this galaxy (~80°) and obscuration by a complex network of dusty filaments in its optical images.