NASA astronaut Don Pettit, aboard the International Space Station (ISS) 420 kilometers above the Pacific Ocean, captured a breathtaking photograph – the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds aptly caught in the window.
What are the Magellanic Clouds?
These are two dwarf satellite galaxies of the Milky Way. The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is located 160,000 light-years away in the constellations Dorado and Mensa, and the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) is located 200,000 light-years away in the constellations Tucana and Hydrus.
Our Milky Way is part of the Local Group of galaxies, which includes more than 50 systems. Among them are the Large Magellanic Cloud and the Small Magellanic Cloud, the closest satellites visible only from the Southern Hemisphere or space.
How the photo was created
The 69-year-old Don Pettit, NASA’s most experienced astronaut, arrived at the ISS on September 11 aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. He took the photo from a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule docked to the station. The long exposure photo was one of a series published by NASA on X (formerly Twitter).
These long-duration photographs look out a window on the @SpaceX #Dragon crew spacecraft toward the Magellanic clouds, two irregular dwarf galaxies, and the Milky Way as the space station orbited over the Pacific Ocean. Credit: NASA/Don Pettit pic.twitter.com/2WI0KPEMRP
— International Space Station (@Space_Station) December 3, 2024
Unique properties of Clouds
The Magellanic Clouds are known for their distorted shape and billions of stars. The last supernova visible to the naked eye was observed in the Large Magellanic Cloud in 1987. Astronomers recently published the first detailed photo of a star outside our galaxy, WOH G64, located in the LMC. This star is 1,500 times larger than the Sun and is on the verge of becoming a supernova.
Earlier we reported on how an astronaut showed the beauty of the threat in orbit.
Provided by Live Science
