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Cosmic Collision

This artist's illustration depicts the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) in the foreground as it passes through the gaseous halo of the much larger Milky Way galaxy. The encounter has stripped away much of the LMC's spherical gas halo, leaving a trailing gas stream resembling a comet's tail. However, a compact halo remains intact, and scientists predict this residual halo will not dissipate entirely. The research team studied the LMC's halo by analyzing the light from 28 quasars, exceptionally bright active galactic nuclei that act as "lighthouse beacons" across the universe. This light enables scientists to detect the halo gas indirectly, as the gas absorbs some of the quasars' light. The lines in the illustration represent the path of the Hubble Space Telescope's observations, from its orbit around Earth to the distant quasars, passing through the LMC's gas halo.

Hubble Reveals Impact of Galaxy’s Close Encounter with Milky Way

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