In the past, the European Space Agency (ESA) has released some awe-inspiring pictures of space – from the empty lakes on Titan to an eclipse shadow seen from the International Space Station. ESA, always seeking to inspire would-be astronauts, recently released another majestic sight, two Magellanic Clouds, in a picture that somewhat resembles a celestial version of a Van Gogh painting.
WHAT ARE THE MAGELLANIC CLOUDS?
The two Magellanic Clouds, seen in the photo below, are a duo of irregular dwarf galaxies that are visible from the southern hemisphere. From our terrestrial standpoint, the swirls don’t seem like much. However, the two small “cloud” like patches – in the middle of the image and to the bottom left – are representative of the Large Magellanic Cloud, located roughly 160,000 light-years away and the Small Magellanic Cloud, located 200,000 light-years away, respectively.
These dwarf galaxies, around ten and seven billion times the mass of our sun, are named after Portuguese navigator, Ferdinand Magellan. According to the ESA, they are also “among the nearest companions” of our very own Milky Way galaxy.
The image was captured by the Planck satellite, which was launched back in 2009, and deactivated in 2013. The space observatory, operated by ESA, managed to detect the dust between the stars infiltrating the Magellanic Clouds “while surveying the sky to study the cosmic microwave background – the most ancient light in the Universe,” according to the ESA in a press release.
However, it’s not just the two Magellanic Clouds that are depicted. Other galaxies are revealed in the foreground and the interstellar dust from our galaxy is the “mixture of red, orange and yellow clouds in the upper part of this image, which belong to a large star-forming complex in the southern constellation, Chameleon.”
The variety of colors seen in the image come from Planck’s imaging equipment, which assigns colors to the dust formations in order to visualize the interaction of comic dust with our galaxy’s magnetic field, reports The Space Reporter. Although, astronomers eventually need to remove the interstellar material to study the “wealth of cosmic information” held in the ancient light, the technology currently allows us to enjoy one-of-a-kind pictures that are as beautiful as they are enlightening.
MORE SPACE PLEASE!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdcU4nKKV2E
Magellanic Clouds Photo Rivals Van Gogh Painting
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