Tuesday, December 03, 2024

Views of The Milky Way & Magellanic Cloud Galaxies | International Space Station

Views of The Milky Way & Magellanic Cloud Galaxies | International Space Station

This long-duration photograph looks out a window on the SpaceX Dragon crew spacecraft to the Milky Way as the International Space Station orbited 262 miles above the Pacific Ocean northeast of New Zealand.
The Milky Way appears in the vastness of space behind the SpaceX Dragon crew spacecraft docked to the Harmony module's space-facing port on the International Space Station. NASA astronaut and Expedition 71 Flight Engineer Matt Dominick can be seen peering out of the left window on Dragon while soaring 254 miles above the Pacific Ocean.
This long-duration photograph looks out a window on the SpaceX Dragon crew spacecraft to the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, two irregular dwarf galaxies, as the International Space Station orbited 260 miles above the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Mexico.

This long-duration photograph looks out a window on the SpaceX Dragon crew spacecraft to the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, two irregular dwarf galaxies, as the International Space Station orbited 260 miles above the Pacific Ocean northeast of Australia.

Nearly 200,000 light-years from Earth, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, floats in space, in a long and slow dance around our galaxy. The Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) is one of the Milky Way’s closest galactic neighbors. Even though it is a small, or so-called dwarf galaxy, the SMC is so bright that it is visible to the unaided eye from the Southern Hemisphere and near the equator. Many navigators, including Ferdinand Magellan who lends his name to the SMC, used it to help find their way across the oceans. Modern astronomers are also interested in studying the SMC (and its cousin, the Large Magellanic Cloud), but for very different reasons. Because the SMC is so close and bright, it offers an opportunity to study phenomena that are difficult to examine in more distant galaxies.

Expedition 72 Updates:

Expedition 72 Crew
Station Commander: Suni Williams
Roscosmos (Russia): Alexey Ovchinin, Ivan Vagner, Aleksandr Gorbunov
NASA: Butch Wilmore, Don Pettit, Nick Hague

An international partnership of space agencies provides and operates the elements of the International Space Station (ISS). The principals are the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan, and Canada.


Image Credits: NASA's Johnson Space Center/Don Pettit
Image Dates: June 29-Nov. 28, 2024
Release Date: Dec. 2, 2024

#NASA #Space #Science #ISS #SpaceXCrewDragon #Earth #Galaxies #MilkyWayGalaxy #MagellanicCloudGalaxies #LMC #SMC #Astronauts #Cosmonauts #Russia #Россия #Roscosmos #Роскосмос #InternationalCooperation #LongDurationMissions #SpaceLaboratory #HumanSpaceflight #UnitedStates #Expedition71 #Expedition72 #STEM #Education

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