WWW.ASTRONOMY.COM 9A NEW
LOOK AT
A CLOSE
NEIGHBOR
Data reveal stars
hidden by dust.
You can learn a lot about your
neighborhood by looking at
your neighbors. That’s exactly
what astronomers are doing
with the European Southern
Observatory’s Visible and
Infrared Survey Telescope for
Astronomy (VISTA). VISTA
is imaging 184 square degrees
of sky encompassing the
Large and Small Magellanic
Clouds — the Milky Way’s
largest satellite galaxies — and
their surroundings. These small
galaxies provide the perfect places
to study how stars are born,
live, and die — key processes
that shape a galaxy over time.
Mapping their stars also allows
researchers to determine the
galaxies’ 3D structure. Here, the
Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC)
appears in near-infrared light.
These wavelengths, which are
slightly longer than visible light,
cut through dust that obscures
the LMC’s stars from optical
instruments. Using images such
as this, astronomers identified
roughly 10 million stars in the
small galaxy, finding that younger
stars seem to lie along its subtle
spiral arms. — ALISON KLESMANBLOWING BUBBLES
Astronomers using
the MeerKAT radio
telescope discovered
towering, hourglass-
shaped bubbles in the
Milky Way’s center.
The structure is likely
associated with our
supermassive black hole.SHREDDED SATELLITE
The strange brightening
and fading observed in
Tabby’s star could be
explained if the alien
sun tore an exomoon
out of orbit around its
planet and ripped it to
pieces, forming a ring
of dust around the star.BIG INFLUENCE
A study led by the
University of Central
Florida explains how
interactions with Jupiter
allow some objects from
the outer solar system to
change orbits, bringing
them close enough to the
Sun to become comets.HOT
BYTESSNAPSHOTQUANTUM GRAVITY
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