About this Object:  

M81and M82 together form the most famous galactic pair known, but a third galaxy wants to crash the party.

M81, on bottom-left, is a nice spiral galaxy in Ursa Major, the "big bear."  Its size, from earth, is near the equivalent of our full moon; therefore, this is one of the larger galaxies in the night sky from our vantage point.  Here, the majestic and sweeping spiral arms show an abundance of hot, star forming regions. M81 is also known as "Bode's Nebula."  

In contrast to M81, M82 (bottom-right) is a peculiar galaxy shown on edge.  Because it is shown on edge it is unclear exactly what type of galaxy this is.  A unique feature of this galaxy is the red ejecta spraying out of the core which is somewhat captured here in this image.  The ejecta is likely caused by tidal attractions to the larger M81 neightbor.  M82 is sometimes known as the "Cigar Galaxy" because of its shape.

The party crasher is NGC 3077, a magnitude 10, peculiar galaxy.  Like M82, it shows strange structures and dust clouds that are likely due to gravitational interaction with other, larger members of the M81 group.  It looks much like an elliptical galaxy.  According to Wikipedia, the active nucleus of this galaxy "caused Carl Seyfert in 1943 to include it in his list of galaxies, which are now called Seyfert Galaxies. However, NGC 3077, though an emission line galaxy, is today no longer classified as a Seyfert galaxy."

Together, these galaxies are circumpolar for most of the United States, meaning that they rest very near the celestial pole.