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NASA's Hubble Sees Aftermath of Galaxy's Scrape with Milky Way
Release date: Thursday, November 14, 2024 10:00:00 AM Eastern Standard Time
Encounter Blew Away Most of Smaller Galaxy's Gaseous Halo
In an epic story of survival witnessed by the Hubble Space Telescope, one of our nearest galactic neighbors has crashed through the Milky Way galaxy's gaseous halo and lived to tell the tale. But in the process, this dwarf galaxy, called the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), has been stripped of most of its own surrounding halo of gas. Researchers were surprised to find such an extremely small gaseous halo remaining – one around 10 times smaller than halos of other galaxies of similar mass. Still, the LMC has held onto enough of its gas to keep forming new stars. A smaller galaxy wouldn't have survived such an encounter. This is the first time astronomers have been able to measure the size of the LMC's halo – something they could do only with Hubble.
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