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Credit & Copyright: Chris Willocks
Explanation:
The 16th century Portuguese navigator
Ferdinand Magellan
and his crew had plenty of time to study the
southern sky during the
first circumnavigation
of planet Earth.
As a result, two fuzzy cloud-like
objects easily visible to southern hemisphere
skygazers are known as the
Clouds of Magellan, now understood to be
satellite galaxies of our much larger, spiral Milky Way galaxy.
About 160,000 light-years distant in the constellation
Dorado, the
Large Magellanic Cloud
is seen in this
sharp
galaxy portrait.
Spanning about 15,000 light-years or so, it is
the most massive of the Milky Way's
satellite galaxies
and is the home of the
closest supernova in modern times,
SN 1987A.
The prominent patch above center is 30 Doradus,
also known as the magnificent
Tarantula Nebula, a giant
star-forming region about 1,000 light-years across.
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NASA Official: Jay Norris. Specific rights apply.
A service of: LHEA at NASA / GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
Based on Astronomy Picture
Of the Day
Publications with keywords: LMC
Publications with words: LMC
See also: