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A fast starburst wind consumes most of the energy from supernovae

Nature volume 651, pages 909–913 (2026) Cite this article

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Abstract

Starburst galaxies often host multiphase, galaxy-scale winds thought to enrich the circumgalactic medium and limit further star formation by disrupting interstellar gas clouds1,2,3. These winds are primarily powered by supernovae4,5,6, but it remains unclear how supernova energy forms an organized flow. Here we use the Resolve spectrometer on the X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission to show that the hot (T = 2 × 107 K) gas in the nucleus of the starburst galaxy M82 is moving quickly, with a line-of-sight velocity dispersion \(\sigma =59{5}_{-128}^{+464}\,\mathrm{km}\,{{\rm{s}}}^{-1}\). This is consistent with a hot, nuclear wind generated by thermal pressure. We show that a free-wind model reproduces the measured temperature but underpredicts the velocity. The inferred mass and energy outflow rates from the nucleus, about 7 M⊙ yr−1 and 4 × 1042 erg s−1, require that most supernova energy is thermalized. These outflow rates provide enough energy to power the ≳30 M⊙ yr−1 cool outflow and still transport up to 3 M⊙ yr−1 to the intergalactic medium, suggesting that thermal gas pressure is sufficient to power the multiphase wind without additional support from cosmic rays7. We also show that the nuclear gas is hotter and faster than the plasma seen on larger scales (\(kT\,=\,{0.72}_{-0.08}^{+0.10}\,\mathrm{keV}\), \(\sigma =17{5}_{-73}^{+86}\,\mathrm{km}\,{{\rm{s}}}^{-1}\)), suggesting a distinct origin for the latter.

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Fig. 1: Resolve spectrum of the starburst nucleus of M82.
The alternative text for this image may have been generated using AI.
Fig. 2: Power budget and thermalization efficiency of the hot wind.
The alternative text for this image may have been generated using AI.
Fig. 3: A one-dimensional, free-wind model of M82.
The alternative text for this image may have been generated using AI.
Fig. 4: The multiphase power budget of the wind.
The alternative text for this image may have been generated using AI.

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Data availability

The XRISM data analysed in this study (ObsID 300068010) are available in the High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center (HEASARC; https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/archive.html) of NASA. Source data are provided with this paper.

Code availability

The codes used for the data reduction (https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/software/heasoft) and spectral fitting (https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/xanadu/xspec) are freely available from the HEASARC website.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI grant nos. JP22H00158, JP22H01268, JP22K03624, JP23H04899, JP21K13963, JP24K00638, JP24K17105, JP21K13958, JP21H01095, JP23K20850, JP24H00253, JP21K03615, JP24K00677, JP20K14491, JP23H00151, JP19K21884, JP20H01947, JP20KK0071, JP23K20239, JP24K00672, JP24K17104, JP24K17093, JP20K04009, JP21H04493, JP20H01946, JP23K13154, JP19K14762, JP20H05857 and JP23K03459 and NASA grant nos. 80NSSC23K0646, 80NSSC20K0733, 80NSSC18K0978, 80NSSC20K0883, 80NSSC20K0737, 80NSSC24K0678, 80NSSC18K1684 and 80NNSC22K1922. L. Corrales acknowledges support from NSF award no. 2205918. C. Done acknowledges support from STFC through grant no. ST/T000244/1. L. Gallo acknowledges financial support from the Canadian Space Agency grant no. 18XARMSTMA. M. Sawada acknowledges support from the RIKEN Pioneering Project Evolution of Matter in the Universe (r-EMU) and the Rikkyo University Special Fund for Research (Rikkyo SFR). A. Tanimoto and the present research are supported, in part, by the Kagoshima University postdoctoral research program (KU-DREAM). S. Yamada acknowledges support by the RIKEN SPDR Program. I. Zhuravleva acknowledges partial support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation through the Sloan Research Fellowship. This material is based on the work supported by NASA under award no. 80GSFC24M0006. Part of this work was performed under the auspices of the US Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under contract no. DE-AC52-07NA27344. This work was supported by the JSPS Core-to-Core Program, JPJSCCA20220002. The material is based on the work supported by the Strategic Research Center of Saitama University. This research has made use of data obtained from the Chandra Data Archive provided by the Chandra X-ray Center (CXC). This research has made use of data from the NuSTAR mission, a project led by the California Institute of Technology, managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. This research has made use of data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope obtained from the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, under NASA contract no. NAS 5-26555.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Astronomy, University of Geneva, Versoix, Switzerland

    Marc Audard, Dominique Eckert & Stephane Paltani

  2. Department of Physics, Ehime University, Matsuyama, Japan

    Hisamitsu Awaki, Megumi Shidatsu & Yuichi Terashima

  3. Department of Astronomy, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

    Ralf Ballhausen, Michael Loewenstein, François Mernier, Richard Mushotzky, Anna Ogorzalek & Erin Boettcher

  4. NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA

    Ralf Ballhausen, Rozenn Boissay-Malaquin, Renata Cumbee, Javier A. García, Kenji Hamaguchi, Takayuki Hayashi, Edmund Hodges-Kluck, Ann Hornschemeier, Timothy Kallman, Richard Kelley, Caroline Kilbourne, Maurice Leutenegger, Michael Loewenstein, Maxim Markevitch, François Mernier, Koji Mukai, Anna Ogorzalek, Takashi Okajima, Robert Petre, Frederick S. Porter, Katja Pottschmidt, Keisuke Tamura, Ayşegül Tümer, Brian J. Williams, Tahir Yaqoob, Mihoko Yukita, Erin Boettcher & Gabriel Grell

  5. Center for Research and Exploration in Space Science and Technology, NASA/GSFC (CRESST II), Greenbelt, MD, USA

    Ralf Ballhausen, Rozenn Boissay-Malaquin, Kenji Hamaguchi, Takayuki Hayashi, Michael Loewenstein, François Mernier, Koji Mukai, Anna Ogorzalek, Katja Pottschmidt, Keisuke Tamura, Ayşegül Tümer, Tahir Yaqoob & Erin Boettcher

  6. Department of Physics, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

    Aya Bamba & Kouichi Hagino

  7. Department of Physics, Technion, Haifa, Israel

    Ehud Behar

  8. Center for Space Sciences and Technology, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Rozenn Boissay-Malaquin, Kenji Hamaguchi, Takayuki Hayashi, Koji Mukai, Katja Pottschmidt, Keisuke Tamura, Ayşegül Tümer & Tahir Yaqoob

  9. Center for Astrophysics|Harvard-Smithsonian, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Laura Brenneman, Adam Foster, Paul Plucinsky, Randall Smith & Peter Kosec

  10. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Gregory V. Brown, Megan E. Eckart & Natalie Hell

  11. Department of Astronomy, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

    Lia Corrales & Jon M. Miller

  12. SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research, Leiden, The Netherlands

    Elisa Costantini, Liyi Gu, Jelle Kaastra, Aurora Simionescu & Jacco Vink

  13. European Southern Observatory, Garching, Germany

    María Díaz Trigo

  14. Centre for Extragalactic Astronomy, Department of Physics, University of Durham, Durham, UK

    Chris Done

  15. Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS), Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Kanagawa, Japan

    Tadayasu Dotani, Ken Ebisawa, Ryuichi Fujimoto, Kotaro Fukushima, Katsuhiro Hayashi, Daiki Ishi, Manabu Ishida, Yoshiaki Kanemaru, Yoshitomo Maeda, Shoji Ogawa, Hiromasa Suzuki, Makoto Tashiro, Yukikatsu Terada, Masahiro Tsujimoto, Nagomi Uchida, Shin Watanabe, Hiroya Yamaguchi, Noriko Yamasaki & Tessei Yoshida

  16. Department of Economics, Kumamoto Gakuen University, Kumamoto, Japan

    Satoshi Eguchi

  17. Department of Physics, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan

    Teruaki Enoto, Takeshi Tsuru & Hiroyuki Uchida

  18. Department of Physics, Tokyo Metropolitan University, Tokyo, Japan

    Yuichiro Ezoe, Yutaka Fujita, Kumi Ishikawa, Yoshitaka Ishisaki & Hiromi Seta

  19. Department of Physics, Hiroshima University, Hiroshima, Japan

    Yasushi Fukazawa & Hiromitsu Takahashi

  20. Department of Physics, Fujita Health University, Aichi, Japan

    Akihiro Furuzawa

  21. Department of Astronomy and Physics, Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

    Luigi Gallo

  22. California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA

    Javier A. García

  23. European Space Agency (ESA), European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC), Noordwijk, The Netherlands

    Matteo Guainazzi

  24. Faculty of Engineering, University of Miyazaki, Miyazaki, Japan

    Isamu Hatsukade, Koji Mori & Makoto Yamauchi

  25. RIKEN Nishina Center, Saitama, Japan

    Yuto Ichinohe & Toru Tamagawa

  26. Leiden Observatory, Universiteit Leiden, Leiden, The Netherlands

    Jelle Kaastra

  27. Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Erin Kara, Eric D. Miller & Peter Kosec

  28. Department of Physics, Saitama University, Saitama, Japan

    Satoru Katsuda, Mai Takeo, Makoto Tashiro & Yukikatsu Terada

  29. Department of Physics, Rikkyo University, Tokyo, Japan

    Shunji Kitamoto, Makoto Sawada & Shinya Yamada

  30. Faculty of Physics, Tokyo University of Science, Tokyo, Japan

    Shogo Kobayashi & Kyoko Matsushita

  31. Faculty of Science and Technology, Tokyo University of Science, Chiba, Japan

    Takayoshi Kohmura & Yuusuke Uchida

  32. Department of Electronic Information Systems, Shibaura Institute of Technology, Saitama, Japan

    Aya Kubota

  33. Department of Earth and Space Science, Osaka University, Osaka, Japan

    Hironori Matsumoto, Hirokazu Odaka & Hiroshi Tsunemi

  34. Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA

    Dan McCammon

  35. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Waterloo Centre for Astrophysics, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

    Brian McNamara

  36. Department of Physics, Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan

    Ikuyuki Mitsuishi, Kazuhiro Nakazawa, Kazutaka Yamaoka, Kazuki Ampuku & Seiya Sasamata

  37. Science Research Education Unit, University of Teacher Education Fukuoka, Fukuoka, Japan

    Misaki Mizumoto

  38. Hiroshima Astrophysical Science Center, Hiroshima University, Hiroshima, Japan

    Tsunefumi Mizuno

  39. Department of Data Science, Tohoku Gakuin University, Sendai, Japan

    Hiroshi Murakami

  40. College of Science and Engineering, Kanto Gakuin University, Yokohama, Japan

    Hiroshi Nakajima

  41. European Space Agency (ESA), European Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC), Madrid, Spain

    Jan-Uwe Ness

  42. Department of Science, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Kindai University, Osaka, Japan

    Kumiko Nobukawa

  43. Department of Teacher Training and School Education, Nara University of Education, Nara, Japan

    Masayoshi Nobukawa

  44. Astronomical Institute, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan

    Hirofumi Noda

  45. Department of Physics, Nara Women’s University, Nara, Japan

    Naomi Ota & Shigeo Yamauchi

  46. Department of Astrophysics and Atmospheric Sciences, Kyoto Sangyo University, Kyoto, Japan

    Kosuke Sato

  47. School of Science and Technology, Meiji University, Kawasaki, Japan

    Toshiki Sato

  48. Yale Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    Andrew Szymkowiak

  49. Department of Physics, Konan University, Kobe, Japan

    Takaaki Tanaka

  50. Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Kagoshima University, Kagoshima, Japan

    Atsushi Tanimoto & Tomokage Yoneyama

  51. Department of Physics, Chuo University, Tokyo, Japan

    Yohko Tsuboi

  52. Faculty of Education, Shizuoka University, Shizuoka, Japan

    Hideki Uchiyama

  53. Department of Astronomy, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan

    Yoshihiro Ueda

  54. Nihon Fukushi University, Shizuoka, Japan

    Shinichiro Uno

  55. Anton Pannekoek Institute, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Jacco Vink

  56. Frontier Research Institute for Interdisciplinary Sciences, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan

    Satoshi Yamada

  57. Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Mihoko Yukita

  58. Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

    Irina Zhuravleva

  59. School of Earth and Space Exploration, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

    Skylar Grayson & Evan Scannapieco

Consortia

XRISM Collaboration

  • Marc Audard
  • , Hisamitsu Awaki
  • , Ralf Ballhausen
  • , Aya Bamba
  • , Ehud Behar
  • , Rozenn Boissay-Malaquin
  • , Laura Brenneman
  • , Gregory V. Brown
  • , Lia Corrales
  • , Elisa Costantini
  • , Renata Cumbee
  • , María Díaz Trigo
  • , Chris Done
  • , Tadayasu Dotani
  • , Ken Ebisawa
  • , Megan E. Eckart
  • , Dominique Eckert
  • , Satoshi Eguchi
  • , Teruaki Enoto
  • , Yuichiro Ezoe
  • , Adam Foster
  • , Ryuichi Fujimoto
  • , Yutaka Fujita
  • , Yasushi Fukazawa
  • , Kotaro Fukushima
  • , Akihiro Furuzawa
  • , Luigi Gallo
  • , Javier A. García
  • , Liyi Gu
  • , Matteo Guainazzi
  • , Kouichi Hagino
  • , Kenji Hamaguchi
  • , Isamu Hatsukade
  • , Katsuhiro Hayashi
  • , Takayuki Hayashi
  • , Natalie Hell
  • , Edmund Hodges-Kluck
  • , Ann Hornschemeier
  • , Yuto Ichinohe
  • , Daiki Ishi
  • , Manabu Ishida
  • , Kumi Ishikawa
  • , Yoshitaka Ishisaki
  • , Jelle Kaastra
  • , Timothy Kallman
  • , Erin Kara
  • , Satoru Katsuda
  • , Yoshiaki Kanemaru
  • , Richard Kelley
  • , Caroline Kilbourne
  • , Shunji Kitamoto
  • , Shogo Kobayashi
  • , Takayoshi Kohmura
  • , Aya Kubota
  • , Maurice Leutenegger
  • , Michael Loewenstein
  • , Yoshitomo Maeda
  • , Maxim Markevitch
  • , Hironori Matsumoto
  • , Kyoko Matsushita
  • , Dan McCammon
  • , Brian McNamara
  • , François Mernier
  • , Eric D. Miller
  • , Jon M. Miller
  • , Ikuyuki Mitsuishi
  • , Misaki Mizumoto
  • , Tsunefumi Mizuno
  • , Koji Mori
  • , Koji Mukai
  • , Hiroshi Murakami
  • , Richard Mushotzky
  • , Hiroshi Nakajima
  • , Kazuhiro Nakazawa
  • , Jan-Uwe Ness
  • , Kumiko Nobukawa
  • , Masayoshi Nobukawa
  • , Hirofumi Noda
  • , Hirokazu Odaka
  • , Shoji Ogawa
  • , Anna Ogorzalek
  • , Takashi Okajima
  • , Naomi Ota
  • , Stephane Paltani
  • , Robert Petre
  • , Paul Plucinsky
  • , Frederick S. Porter
  • , Katja Pottschmidt
  • , Kosuke Sato
  • , Toshiki Sato
  • , Makoto Sawada
  • , Hiromi Seta
  • , Megumi Shidatsu
  • , Aurora Simionescu
  • , Randall Smith
  • , Hiromasa Suzuki
  • , Andrew Szymkowiak
  • , Hiromitsu Takahashi
  • , Mai Takeo
  • , Toru Tamagawa
  • , Keisuke Tamura
  • , Takaaki Tanaka
  • , Atsushi Tanimoto
  • , Makoto Tashiro
  • , Yukikatsu Terada
  • , Yuichi Terashima
  • , Yohko Tsuboi
  • , Masahiro Tsujimoto
  • , Hiroshi Tsunemi
  • , Takeshi Tsuru
  • , Ayşegül Tümer
  • , Hiroyuki Uchida
  • , Nagomi Uchida
  • , Yuusuke Uchida
  • , Hideki Uchiyama
  • , Yoshihiro Ueda
  • , Shinichiro Uno
  • , Jacco Vink
  • , Shin Watanabe
  • , Brian J. Williams
  • , Satoshi Yamada
  • , Shinya Yamada
  • , Hiroya Yamaguchi
  • , Kazutaka Yamaoka
  • , Noriko Yamasaki
  • , Makoto Yamauchi
  • , Shigeo Yamauchi
  • , Tahir Yaqoob
  • , Tomokage Yoneyama
  • , Tessei Yoshida
  • , Mihoko Yukita
  • , Irina Zhuravleva
  • , Kazuki Ampuku
  • , Erin Boettcher
  • , Skylar Grayson
  • , Gabriel Grell
  • , Peter Kosec
  • , Seiya Sasamata
  •  & Evan Scannapieco

Contributions

E. Hodges-Kluck, I. Mitsuishi, T. Tsuru and N. Yamasaki conceived of the programme and planned the observation. M. Yukita reduced the data, and C. Kilbourne and M. Loewenstein performed data quality checks. E. Boettcher, E. Hodges-Kluck and M. Yukita performed spectral fitting of the Resolve data and led the analysis of the wind temperature, velocity, mass and energy outflow rates, and thermalization efficiency. G. Grell performed Resolve spectral fitting to place a limit on the very hot wind. E. Hodges-Kluck analysed archival Chandra data and the coordinated Swift observation, and M. Yukita jointly analysed the Resolve data and archival NuSTAR data. S. Grayson and E. Scannapieco performed the free-wind modelling. E. Boettcher led the preparation of the manuscript. K. Ampuku, R. Cumbee, A. Foster, Y. Fujita, K. Fukushima, A. Hornschemeier, R. Kelley, S. Kobayashi and S. Sasamata contributed to discussions in regular meetings of the XRISM M82 Target Team. T. Sato and J. Vink served as internal reviewers. The science goals of XRISM were discussed and developed over 7 years by the XRISM Science Team, all members of which are authors of this manuscript. All the instruments were prepared by the joint efforts of the team. The manuscript was subject to an internal, collaboration-wide review process. All authors reviewed and approved the final version of the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Erin Boettcher.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Nature thanks Laura Lopez, Sebastian Lopez and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Peer reviewer reports are available.

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Extended data figures and tables

Extended Data Fig. 1 The starburst nucleus of M82.

The nucleus falls fully within the Resolve field of view (\({3}^{{\prime} }\times {3}^{{\prime} }=3\,{\rm{k}}{\rm{p}}{\rm{c}}\times 3\,{\rm{k}}{\rm{p}}{\rm{c}}\); black outline in a), with the excluded pixel 27 shaded in gray). A Chandra ACIS-S narrowband image shows that the hottest gas traced by Fe xxv 6.7 keV emission (white contours in b) is largely contained within an ellipsoidal thermalization zone (purple region in cartoon in c), where star clusters demarcated by H ii regions (gray clouds) shock-heat ambient medium bounded in the plane of the galaxy by a molecular torus22 (white ring, shown as a cross-section). The torus reduces the fraction of the hot wind that can freely stream (arrows in cartoon), producing the biconical outflow seen in softer emission lines by Chandra (red regions). The spatial extent of Si xiv 2.0 keV emission (R ≲ 1 kpc, Chandra narrowband image in a and b) is representative of the E < 4 keV emission lines seen by Resolve, including S xv 2.4 keV, S xvi 2.6 keV, and Ar xvii 3.1 keV. Softer X-ray emission represented by the O viii 0.65 keV contour plot in a is extended to R ≳ 2 kpc. Point sources have been masked in Chandra images. The blue arrows lie along the major axis of the galaxy.

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XRISM Collaboration. A fast starburst wind consumes most of the energy from supernovae. Nature 651, 909–913 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10231-1

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