File:Ssc2006-17a.jpg

Summary[edit]

This vibrant image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy to our own Milky Way galaxy.

The infrared image, a mosaic of more than 100,000 individual tiles, offers astronomers a unique chance to study the lifecycle of stars and dust in a single galaxy. Nearly one million objects are revealed for the first time in this Spitzer view, which represents about a 1,000-fold improvement in sensitivity over previous space-based missions. Most of the new objects are dusty stars of various ages populating the Large Magellanic Cloud; the rest are thought to be background galaxies.

The blue color in the picture, seen most prominently in the central bar, represents starlight from older stars. The chaotic, bright regions outside this bar are filled with hot, massive stars buried in thick blankets of dust. The red clouds contain cooler interstellar gas and molecular-sized dust grains illuminated by ambient starlight.

The Large Magellanic Cloud, located 160,000 light-years from Earth, is one of a handful of dwarf galaxies that orbit our own Milky Way. It is approximately one-third as wide as the Milky Way, and, if it could be seen in its entirety, would cover the same amount of sky as a grid of about 480 full moons. About one-third of the whole galaxy can be seen in the Spitzer image.

This picture is a composite of infrared light captured by Spitzer's infrared array camera. Light with wavelengths of 8 and 5.8 microns is red and orange: 4.5-micron light is green; and 3.6-micron light is blue.

File info[edit]

Individual images[edit]

see http://gallery.spitzer.caltech.edu/Imagegallery/image.php?image_name=ssc2006-17a High quality tif files also avaliable.

Licensing[edit]

	This file is in the public domain in the United States because it was solely created by NASA. NASA copyright policy states that "NASA material is not protected by copyright unless noted". (See Template:PD-USGov, NASA copyright policy page or JPL Image Use Policy.)
	Warnings: Use of NASA logos, insignia and emblems is restricted per U.S. law 14 CFR 1221. The NASA website hosts a large number of images from the Soviet/Russian space agency, and other non-American space agencies. These are not necessarily in the public domain. Materials based on Hubble Space Telescope data may be copyrighted if they are not explicitly produced by the STScI.[1] See also {{PD-Hubble}} and {{Cc-Hubble}}. The SOHO (ESA & NASA) joint project implies that all materials created by its probe are copyrighted and require permission for commercial non-educational use. [2] Images featured on the Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) web site may be copyrighted. [3] The National Space Science Data Center (NSSDC) site has been known to host copyrighted content. Its photo gallery FAQ states that all of the images in the photo gallery are in the public domain "Unless otherwise noted."