Pale white veils and the narrow bridge between the clouds represent the distribution of the RR Lyrae stars
Credit: V Belokurov, D’Erkal, A Mellinger
The Magellanic Clouds, the two largest satellite galaxies of the Milky Way, appear to be connected by a bridge stretching across 43,000 light years, according to an international team of astronomers led by researchers from the University of Cambridge. The discovery is reported in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS) and is based on the Galactic stellar census being conducted by the European Space Observatory, Gaia. We believe that in least in part this 'bridge' is composed of stars stripped from the Small Cloud by the Large - Vasily Belokurov For the past 15 years, scientists have been eagerly anticipating the data from Gaia. The first portion of information from the satellite was released three months ago and is freely accessible to everyone. This dataset of unprecedented quality is a catalogue of the positions and brightness of a billion stars in our Milky Way galaxy and its environs. What Gaia has sent to Earth is unique. The satellite's angular resolution is similar to that of the Hubble Space Telescope, but given its greater field of view, it can cover the entire sky rather than a small portion of it.
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