ESO shares new picture featuring ghostly galaxies that orbit Milky Way

The European Southern Observatory's Picture of the Week features two spectacular ghostly galaxies that can only be seen in the night sky of the southern hemisphere,

The two irregular dwarf galaxies, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds (the LMC and SMC, respectively), are satellite galaxies of our own Milky Way galaxy. Lying at a distance of 160,000 light-years and 200,000 light-years respectively, LMC and its smaller companion SMC are among the largest distant objects we can observe with the naked eye.

Sharing the picture, ESO wrote, "Floating in the sky above two of ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) Auxiliary Telescopes are a pair of ethereal shapes. These are the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds — two of the 50 or so satellite galaxies that orbit our more massive Milky Way. These ghostly galaxies can only be seen in the southern hemisphere, in skies that are unpolluted by light from cities. This is one of the reasons that ESO operates the VLT in the remote Chilean Atacama Desert — so that we can study such beguiling objects as the Magellanic Clouds."

A Picture of the Week with ghostly galaxies! Floating in the sky above two of the VLT's auxiliary telescopes are a pair of ethereal shapes — the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, two satellite galaxies that orbit our Milky Way. 🔗 https://t.co/gWrPOgfdJ9Credit: @ESO /M. Zamani pic.twitter.com/VuRLYO5fpz

— ESO (@ESO) April 18, 2022

Both LMC and SMC are much closer to the Milky Way than our nearest major galaxy, Andromeda, 2.5 million light-years away, making them some of our closest galactic neighbours. Given their proximity, these two galaxies have been extensively studied by astronomers.

According to NASA, the LMC is about one-tenth the size of the Milky Way and contains only 1 percent of the latter's mass. The SMC, on the other hand, is half the size of the LMC and contains about two-thirds of its mass.