Space Photo of the Week: Astronaut discovers two nearby galaxies from SpaceX capsule

What it is: The Large Magellanic Cloud and the Small Magellanic Cloud, two dwarf satellite galaxies of the Milky Way

Where it is: 160,000 light-years away, in the constellations Dorado and Mensa (for the Large Magellanic Cloud) and 200,000 light-years away, in the constellations Tucana and Hydrus (for the Small Magellanic Cloud)

When it was shared: December 2, 2024

Why it’s so special: Our Milky Way Galaxy don’t travel through space alone. It is a spiral galaxy with a disk spanning more than 100,000 light-years. It is located in a neighborhood called the Local Group, which includes more than 50 other galaxies. Some of the less massive galaxies in the neighborhood orbit the Milky Way as satellites.

Two satellite galaxies, the Large Magellanic Cloud and the Small Magellanic Cloud, can only be seen in the night sky from the Southern Hemisphere – or from space. This image was taken by Don Pettit, NASA’s oldest active astronaut, at 69 years old. He arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) on September 11 after launching from Kazakhstan on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft along with two Russian cosmonauts.

He took this long exposure image of a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule docked to the ISS. It was one of three related images published on X from NASA; two showed the Magellanic Clouds and the other showed the Milky Way.

Because of their distorted shape, the Magellanic Clouds are called irregular satellite galaxies and each contains billions of stars. Many incredible astronomical observations have been made there. Perhaps the most famous was the Large Magellanic Cloud, where astronomers discovered it in 1987 last supernova visible to the naked eye.

Last month, astronomers revealed the first high-quality, magnified photo of a star outside our galaxy. Located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, the star WOH G64 is 1,500 times wider than the Sun and is about to explode in a violent supernova.

From the Southern Hemisphere, the Magellanic Clouds are easiest to see between December and April.

On his fourth spaceflight, Pettit took long exposure images and posted them on X, including a Star trailSpaceX Starlink satellites And Las Vegas at nightone of the brightest places on earth.

For more great space images, check out our Space Photo of the Week Archive.

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