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Hubble Reveals Splendor of Large Magellanic Cloud
posted: 02:56 pm ET
02 December 1999
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NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has peered at a small area within the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) to provide the deepest color picture ever obtained in that satellite galaxy of our own Milky WayA teamof scientists working with archived Hubble Space Telescope images releaseda deep color picture on Thursday of the Large Magellanic Cloud, the nearestneighbor to our Milky Way galaxy.The image features more than 10,000 stars, coveringa region about 130 light years wide (a light year equals about 6 trillionmiles).
The faintest stars in the picture are about 100million times dimmer than what could be seen with the naked eye. Even our sun, if located in the area photographed,would be one of the faintest stars in the image.Hot stars, with temperatures of 10,000 degrees Celsiusand above, have a bluish-white color in the image. Stars cooler than ourSun's 6,000 degrees Celsius are reddish. The picture, taken in 1996, also shows sheets ofglowing gas and dark patches of interstellar dust silhouetted against thestars and gas behind them. The Large Magellanic Cloud, about 168,000 light yearsfrom Earth, is visible only from the planet's Southern Hemisphere.
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