The Large Magellanic Cloud outside our Milky Way galaxy teems with new
star formation while collecting the remains of old, dead stars
The Large
Magellanic Cloud outside our Milky Way galaxy teems with new star formation
while collecting the remains of old, dead stars.
Sitting about
160,000 light-years away, the Large Magellanic Cloud is on of the nearest
bodies of stars outside our own galaxy. Its sister cloud, the Small Magellanic
Cloud, sits about 200,000 light-years away.
Astronomers
assembled more than 1,500 individual images to build this view – released this
week at the 207th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Washington D.C. – of the Large Magellanic Cloud as part of the Magellanic Cloud Emission
Line Survey. Led by a team at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, the
survey focused on the role of the dusty interstellar medium inside the clouds.
-- SPACE.com Staff
Credit: C. Smith, S. Points, the MCELS Team and NOAO/AURA/NSF.
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