megellanic clouds :: essays research papers fc

Clouds are usually the go things astronomers want to see in the sky, but for those who observe in the gray hemisphere there is a notable exception to that celestial rule. The thumping and Small Magellanic Clouds are among the highlights of the southern night sky. Only within the tolerate century were astronomers able to verify their true nature. Although they seem to be 2 foggy patches possibly torn from the milky Way, astronomers believe these are real small galaxies gravitationally bound to the Milky Way like moons well-nigh a giant planet. The two Clouds of Magellan are like binary stars that gravitational force draws together to form a satellite galaxy. Of all the galaxies in the broad(a) Universe these are the closest to our galactic system. About 170,000 light-years away from the Milky Way galaxy lie the Large Magellanic Cloud. With only 15 zillion young bright stars, it is just one-quarter the size of our protest galaxy. During the winter of 1987, a Canadian astrono mer, Ian Shelton, spotted the first naked eye supernova since 1604, the result of a massive explosion. No more exciting and scientifically significant compositors case has occurred over the last decade in science than Supernova 1987A, as it is known. Photographs interpreted on the night of February 23, 1987, of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a companion galaxy to our own Galaxy, at Canadas southern hemisphere observatory at La Silla, Chile, and at the Siding Springs Observatory in Australia, revealed a 6th-magnitude object where only 12th-magnitude moody supergiant stars had been observed before. Scientists believe that the progenitor of Supernova 1987A is a typical blue supergiant of unearthly type B3. Spectra taken in 1977 do not suggest anything eccentric happening in the outer layers of the star prior to undergoing the supernova outburst. This is not affect since the real changes were occurring deep inside in a relatively comminuted portion of the stars radius. The Large Clou d is quite important because it is the location of this Supernova 1987A, the explode star that for a time shone brightly but that is now dense and dead. Farther away than the Large Cloud, the Small Magellanic Cloud is approximatly 200,000 light-years distant. It is roughly a third the size of the Large Cloud, consisting of only 5 billion sr. stars.The nebulas were named after Portuguese explorer Ferdinan Magellan, the first person to sail almost the world.