Latest Magellanic Clouds Stories
[ Video 1 ] | [ Video 2 ] Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Astronomers have now accurately measured the distance to our neighboring galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). Scientists have struggled with trying to find an accurate distance to the LMC, which is one of the nearest galaxies to the Milky Way. However, a team of astronomers used observations of a rare class of double star, known as eclipsing binaries, to determine that LMC lies 163,000 light-years...
[Watch Video 1] [Watch Video 2] Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), an irregular galaxy that shares some features with spiral galaxies, is known for its array of star-forming regions. One of those regions, LHA 120-N 11 (N11), captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, offers proof that the LMC is producing noticeable signs that stellar nurseries within are still hard at work. The LMC is in an ideal position for astronomers to study...
[Watch the Video: A close look at the globular star cluster 47 Tucanae] redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online Using their Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA), astronomers at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) have managed to capture a new infrared image of 47 Tucanae, the second most massive globular cluster in the galaxy. The picture, which was released by the ESO on Thursday, depicts the cluster “in striking detail,” the...
NASA Of the three telescopes carried by NASA's Swift satellite, only one captures cosmic light at energies similar to those seen by the human eye. Although small by the standards of ground-based observatories, Swift's Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope (UVOT) plays a critical role in rapidly pinpointing the locations of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), the brightest explosions in the cosmos. But as the proxy to the human eye aboard Swift, the UVOT takes some amazing pictures. The Swift team is...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Astronomers using simulations were able to catch the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) in the act of stealing stars away from its neighbor, the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). The team was trying to look for massive compact halo objects (MACHOs) in order to find out if they could be a major component of dark matter. In order for MACHOs to make up dark matter, they must be so faint that they can't be directly detected. When studying the...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online A team of astrophysicists from the Center for Astrophysics at the University of Notre Dame are exploring a discrepancy between the amount of lithium predicted by the standard models of elemental production during the Big Bang and the amount of lithium observed in the gas of the Small Magellanic Cloud. The Small Magellanic Cloud is a dwarf galaxy with a diameter of about 7,000 light-years. It contains several hundred million...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online NASA has released a hauntingly beautiful composite image showing a superbubble in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). The LMC is a small satellite galaxy of the Milky Way located about 160,000 light years from Earth. A superbubble is a cavity, filled with 106 Kelvin gas blown into the interstellar medium by multiple supernovae and stellar winds, hundreds of light years across. These cavities are carved out of the surrounding gas by the...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A new sky survey has revealed that our Milky Way galaxy may not be as special as scientists had previously thought. The Milky Way is a fairly common type of galaxy, but being paired up with neighbors like the Magellanic Clouds makes it stick out above the rest, so much so that astronomers thought it could be a one of a kind occurrence. However, astronomer Dr. Aaron Robotham burst everyone's bubble when searching for groups of...
The cold dust that builds blazing stars is revealed in new images that combine observations from the Herschel Space Observatory, a European Space Agency-led mission with important NASA contributions; and NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. The new images map the dust in the galaxies known as the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, two of the closest neighbors to our own Milky Way galaxy. The Large Magellanic Cloud looks like a fiery, circular explosion in the combined Herschel-Spitzer infrared...
Led by University of Illinois astronomy professor Tony Wong, the researchers published their findings in the December issue of the Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series. The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is a popular galaxy among astronomers both for its nearness to our Milky Way and for the spectacular view it provides, a big-picture vista impossible to capture of our own galaxy. “If you imagine a galaxy being a disc, the LMC is tilted almost face-on so we can look down on it, which...
Latest Magellanic Clouds Reference Libraries
The two Magellanic Clouds (or Nubeculae Magellani), composed of the Large Megellanic Cloud and the Small Magellanic Cloud, are irregular dwarf galaxies visible in the southern hemisphere. They are members of our Local Group and orbit the Milky Way galaxy. Persian astronomer Al Sufi, in 964, was the first to have written anything about the Magellanic Clouds proving they have been known since early time amongst the Middle East peoples. Sufi, in his Book of Fixed Stars, calls the clouds...
The Local Group, compromising more than 30 galaxies (including dwarf galaxies and the Milky Way), is a group of galaxies with a gravitational center located somewhere between the Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy. With a binary (dumbbell) shape and a total mass of (1.29 ± 0.14) × 1012M the Local group covers a 10 million light-year diameter. The local group is part of the Virgo Supercluster. The two largest galaxies in the group are the Milky Way and the Andromeda both Spiral...
Irregular Galaxy -- In astronomy, a class of galaxy with little structure, which does not conform to any of the standard shapes in the Hubble classification. The two satellite galaxies of the Milky Way, the Magellanic Clouds, are both irregulars. Some galaxies previously classified as irregulars are now known to be normal galaxies distorted by tidal effects or undergoing bursts of star formation (see starburst galaxy). ----- NASA Click here to learn more on this topic from...
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![Taken Under the \"Wing\" of the Small Magellanic Cloud](/media/gallery/hubble-space-telescope/thumbs/thumbs_hs-2013-17-a-xlarge_web.jpg "Taken Under the \\"Wing\\" of the Small Magellanic Cloud")
