Claire E. Murray of the Space Telescope Institute and her team published an article in which, based on the movement of gas clouds and newly formed stars within them, they concluded that the structures visible in the sky are two galaxies thousands of years apart . From the earthly point of view they are aligned one behind the other.
Both the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds are satellites of our galaxy and will cross the Milky Way in the future. The Large Magellanic Cloud has so far been much more studied. Mainly because research on the Little Cloud is quite difficult. It has previously been suggested that it may be composed of many parts, but the gravitational influence of the Milky Way and the Large Magellanic Cloud, which significantly influences the irregular shape of the Small Cloud, makes it difficult to discover the truth.
Murray and his colleagues examined data on hydrogen clouds from the Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder and compared it with the positions and velocities of thousands of stars younger than 10 million years on which they collected data from the Gaia telescope. They assumed that such young stars were still moving with the gas cloud from which they formed. In this way they identified two clouds of different composition in which stars form. Based on available data, they found that these regions are 16,000 miles apart. light years. This study is the strongest evidence yet that the Small Magellanic Cloud is actually made up of two galaxies.
If further research confirms this, we will have to choose a name for the newly discovered galaxy. And this could become an excuse to… remove Magellan from the celestial map. A few months ago, the journal “Physics” published an article whose author, Mia de los Reyes of Amherst College, reported the formation of “a coalition of astronomers calling for changing the name of the two brightest satellite galaxies of the Milky Way , as well as other astronomical objects and research infrastructures named after a Portuguese explorer who killed and enslaved indigenous people.
Source:
2024-01-02 13:28:35
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