Observations made of the area around M81 and M82 have detected an outpouring of incandescent gas [similar to the effects noted in HH30 and HH47], but the possibilities are two…as to how this came about.

The first, similar to HH30 and HH47 is that of the galactic pair undergoing short episodes of rapid stellar creation. The other, that a black hole generating millions of degrees of heat, producing luminous shock waves spanning thousands of light years. This is the explanation given for the activity detected in NGC 3079, as well as in the spiral galaxy NGC 4258.

The second [discussed in the first article on the subject] provides us with a working model of how stars form. Taking into consideration that the embryonic stars, while basically spherical, were jettisoning large quantities of gases from bipolar ‘streams’. These 'streams' [or out flows], appear to play an integral role in the formation of new stars, with ‘jets’ emitting a quantity of gas into space equal to the mass of the planet Jupiter every day.

Thanks to the Doppler shift observations of how fast these ‘outflows’ of gas are traveling. Such observations of nearby regions of space [NGC 1068 at 46 million LY] have shown that the forces inside the stellar nurseries that produce new stars can make themselves felt at great distances as the jets [or out flows] of gas plow through the intergalactic medium creating massive shock waves.

As one approaches to the center of the out flow, a dense disk of dust and gas spews matter into the protostellar body as radiation spills out in streams along the poles. The high density of the infalling gas causes the formation of new stellar bodies within the nursery.

Unfortunately, such observations are not always so obvious. There are times when the two possibilities appear to coexist. It is this ‘relationship’ between active galactic nuclei and the stellar nurseries that will continue to make this an area of ‘on going’ study.