What it’s: The Large Magellanic Cloud and the Small Magellanic Cloud, two dwarf satellite tv for pc galaxies of the Milky Way
Where it’s: 160,000 light-years away, within the constellations Dorado and Mensa (for the Large Magellanic Cloud) and 200,000 light-years away, within the constellations Tucana and Hydrus (for the Small Magellanic Cloud)
When it was shared: Dec. 2, 2024
Why it is so particular: Our Milky Way galaxy doesn’t journey by means of area alone. A spiral galaxy with a disk that spans greater than 100,000 light-years, it sits inside a neighborhood referred to as the Local Group, which incorporates greater than 50 different galaxies. Some of the neighborhood’s less-massive galaxies orbit the Milky Way as satellites.
Two satellite tv for pc galaxies, the Large Magellanic Cloud and the Small Magellanic Cloud, will be seen within the night time sky solely from the Southern Hemisphere — or from area. This picture was taken by Don Pettit, NASA’s oldest energetic astronaut, at 69 years outdated. He arrived on the International Space Station (ISS) on Sept. 11, after launching from Kazakhstan in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, together with two Russian cosmonauts.
He took this long-exposure picture from a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule docked to the ISS. It was certainly one of three associated pictures revealed on X by NASA; two featured the Magellanic Clouds, and the opposite confirmed the Milky Way.
Called irregular satellite tv for pc galaxies due to their distorted shapes, the Magellanic Clouds every include billions of stars. Many unimaginable astronomical observations have been made there. Perhaps essentially the most well-known was within the Large Magellanic Cloud, the place in 1987, astronomers noticed the final supernova to be seen with the bare eye.
Last month, astronomers revealed the primary high-quality, zoomed-in photograph of a star exterior our galaxy. Located within the Large Magellanic Cloud, the star, WOH G64, is 1,500 occasions wider than the solar and getting ready to exploding in a violent supernova.
The Magellanic Clouds are most simply seen between December and April from the Southern Hemisphere.
On his fourth spaceflight, Pettit has been taking long-exposure pictures and posting them on X, together with a star path, SpaceX Starlink satellites and Las Vegas at night time, one of many brightest locations on Earth.
For extra elegant area pictures, try our Space Photo of the Week archives.
