Three Starburst galaxies taken from the website of Dave Strickland. Top row is 20 x 20 kpc, while bottom row is 5 x 5 kpc. Starlight in green; H-alpha in red; Soft X-ray in blue. The supernova explosions and strong stellar winds have created a hot bubble in the near-nuclear ISM which has burst vertically out of the disk in a superwind. Both warm (H-alpha emitting) and hot (X-ray emitting) gas has been advected up out of the disk.
Similar figures for M82, with a deeper H-alpha image on the right.
Higher resolution image of the central region in NGC 3079.