Closer than Andromeda, further than the Milky Way
If our galaxy - the Milky Way - is 100,000 light years across and the closest galaxy to the Milky Way is Andromeda - which is 2 million light years away -
how can an object be 170,000 light years away?
There are two objects in the southern night sky that appear as whispy tufts of cloud. They are the large and small Magellanic Clouds - the 2 companion
galaxies of the Milky Way. They are not major galaxies like the Milky Way and Andromeda, but though minor they possess the characteristics of true galactic
formations. And unlike major galaxies they are not racing away from us as the universe expands, they are instead gravitationaly tethered.
To the right is an image of Andromeda, our closest major galatic neighbor. Andromeda has two companions as well, the bright objects that appear above and
below its outskirts.
The picture to the left shows us how our two companions look from Earth. It is likey this is how Andromedas companions would appear from a planetary vantage point within that galaxy.
The Megellanic Clouds contain all the components you would expect from a galaxy - stars, probably planets, and spectacular clouds of gas.
A NASA Hubble Space Telescope view of a turbulent cauldron of starbirth, called N159, taking place 170,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Torrential stellar winds from hot newborn massive stars within the nebula sculpt ridges, arcs, and filaments in the vast cloud, which is over 150 light-years across. A rare type of compact ionized "blob" is resolved for the first time to be a butterfly-shaped or "Papillon" (French for "butterfly") nebula, buried in the center of the maelstrom of glowing gases and dark dust. The unprecedented details of the structure of the Papillon, itself less than 2 light-years in size (about 2 arcseconds in the sky), are seen in the inset.
