Latest Small Magellanic Cloud Stories

April Flowers for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Using NASA’s Swift satellite, astronomers from NASA and Pennsylvania State University have created the most detailed ultraviolet surveys to-date of the two closest major galaxies, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. "We took thousands of images and assembled them into seamless portraits of the main body of each galaxy, resulting in the highest-resolution surveys of the Magellanic Clouds at ultraviolet wavelengths," said...

WASHINGTON, June 3, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Astronomers at NASA and Pennsylvania State University have used NASA's Swift satellite to create the most detailed ultraviolet light surveys ever of the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, the two closest major galaxies. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) "We took thousands of images and assembled them into seamless portraits of the main body of each galaxy, resulting in the highest-resolution surveys of...

[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...

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...

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...

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online An image of an isolated galaxy located approximately nine million light years from the Milky Way has been captured using the Hubble Space Telescope, NASA officials announced on Friday. The picture features a relatively isolated, dwarf irregular galaxy known as DDO 190, which officials from the US space agency describe as relatively small and lacking in structure. The galaxy, which was identified and code named in honor of the...

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...

The Magellanic Stream is an arc of hydrogen gas spanning more than 100 degrees of the sky as it trails behind the Milky Way's neighbor galaxies, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. Our home galaxy, the Milky Way, has long been thought to be the dominant gravitational force in forming the Stream by pulling gas from the Clouds. A new computer simulation by Gurtina Besla (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) and her colleagues now shows, however, that the Magellanic Stream resulted...

A spectacular new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image "” one of the largest ever released of a star-forming region "” highlights N11, part of a complex network of gas clouds and star clusters within our neighboring galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud. This region of energetic star formation is one of the most active in the nearby Universe.The Large Magellanic Cloud contains many bright bubbles of glowing gas. One of the largest and most spectacular has the name LHA 120-N 11, from its...