Australian scientists managed to capture a close-up of the Small Magellanic Cloud, one of our neighboring galaxies, the Milky Way
“The sharpness of this image is unprecedented.” This is the first thing he said Nickolas Pencil, main author of a study by Australian scientists. In their Twitter post, scientists at the Australian National University posed a challenge: “Nickolas Pingel led the team that captured this stunning image, but guess what it is?”
It is the Small Magellanic Cloud, one of the Milky Way’s closest neighbors. Pingel explained that, to date, this photograph is the sharpest yet of hydrogen emitted by this galaxy.
Hydrogen interacts with supernovae
The Small Magellanic Cloud is known as ‘SMC’, short for Small Magellanic Cloud (Small Magellanic Cloud) and in the galactic catalog it is ‘NGC 292’. It is a dwarf irregular galaxy near the Milky Way, the galaxy in which our Sun is located, and is an average of 200,000 light-years away. It is one of the most distant objects visible to the naked eye. It is a hundred times smaller than the Milky Way and therefore between 1 and 4 billion stars.
Pingel said that, for the first time, they could see all the small structures. This is an important step towards understanding the role of hydrogen in the evolution of galaxies. Hydrogen is the main element in star formation. For example, the image shows that there are holes inside the gas, which indicates that hydrogen interacts with supernovae, which are stellar explosions.
The researchers used CSIRO’s ASKAP radio telescope and a Software high technology to capture and process 100 hours of data.
But the team wants to take the project one step further. They say this image was part of a pilot test and plan to collect more information next year.
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