Stunning Close-Up Reveals Secrets of Milky Way’s Neighbor in “Unprecedented” Clarity

Hydrogen Emitted From Small Magellanic Cloud

Credit: Nickolas Pingel et al.

A stunning image captured by researchers at The Australian National University (ANU) and Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO, shows one of the Milky Way’s closest neighbors in new detail.

Lead author of the study, Dr. Nickolas Pingel, says it is the clearest ever picture of hydrogen emitted from the Small Magellanic Cloud.

“The clarity of this image is unprecedented,” he said.

“We’re able to see all of the small-scale structures for the first time. It’s an important step in understanding the role hydrogen plays in the evolution of galaxies.

“For example, you can see holes within the gas. This shows us that hydrogen interacts with supernovae.”

This study focused on the Small Magellanic Cloud – the nearest satellite galaxy of the Milky Way.

The team used CSIRO’s ASKAP radio telescope and high-tech software to capture and process 100 hours of data.

Now they hope to take the project a step further.

“This specific image was part of a pilot survey,” Dr. Pingel said.

“Over the next year we are going to collect more observations. Eventually, we’ll be able to connect them and make a giant mosaic which will show how this galaxy connects to its nearby neighbors.”

The study has been published online.

Reference: “GASKAP-HI Pilot Survey Science I: ASKAP Zoom Observations of HI Emission in the Small Magellanic Cloud” by N. M. Pingel, J. Dempsey, N. M. McClure-Griffiths, J. M. Dickey, K. E. Jameson, H. Arce, G. Anglada, J. Bland-Hawthorn, S. L. Breen, F. Buckland-Willis, S. E. Clark, J. R. Dawson, H. Dénes, E. M. Di Teodoro, B.-Q. For, Tyler J. Foster, J. F. Gómez, H. Imai, G. Joncas, C.-G. Kim, M.-Y. Lee, C. Lynn, D. Leahy, Y. K. Ma, A. Marchal, D. McConnell, M.-A. Miville-Deschênes, V. A. Moss, C. E. Murray, D. Nidever, J. Peek, S. Stanimirović, L. Staveley-Smith, T. Tepper-Garcia, C. D. Tremblay, L. Uscanga, J. Th. van Loon, E. Vázquez-Semadeni, J. R. Allison, C. S. Anderson, Lewis Ball, M. Bell, D. C.-J. Bock, J. Bunton, F. R. Cooray, T. Cornwell, B. S. Koribalski, N. Gupta, D. B. Hayman, L. Harvey-Smith, K. Lee-Waddell, A. Ng, C. J. Phillips, M. Voronkov, T. Westmeier and M. T. Whiting, 9 November 2021, Astrophysics > Astrophysics of Galaxies.
arXiv:2111.05339

The project is part of the Galactic ASKAP (GASKAP) Survey, one of several priority projects to be undertaken with the ASKAP radio telescope. ASKAP is a radio telescope located in Western Australia. It has 36 dish antennas which work together as one telescope and can generate more raw data at a faster rate than Australia’s entire internet traffic. 

CSIRO acknowledges the Wajarri Yamatji as the traditional owners of the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory site where ASKAP is located.

2 Comments on "Stunning Close-Up Reveals Secrets of Milky Way’s Neighbor in “Unprecedented” Clarity"

  1. The Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC)is Not the closest
    galaxy to the Milky Way Galaxy.
    At 200,000 light years it is further away by about 40,000 LY from the Large Magellanic cloud (LMC)which at 160,000 LY the closest.

  2. Babu G. Ranganathan | December 28, 2021 at 6:53 am | Reply

    Babu G. Ranganathan*
    (B.A. Bible/Biology)

    JUST BECAUSE SCIENCE CAN EXPLAIN how an airplane works doesn’t mean that no one designed or made the airplane. And just because science can explain how life or the universe works doesn’t mean there was no Designer and Maker behind them.

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    The law of entropy doesn’t allow the universe to be eternal. If the universe were eternal, everything, including time (which modern science has shown is as physical as mass and space), would have become totally entropied by now and the entire universe would have ended in a uniform heat death a long, long time ago. The fact that this hasn’t happened already is powerful evidence for a beginning to the universe.

    Popular atheistic scientist Stephen Hawking admits that the universe had a beginning and came from nothing but he believes that nothing became something by a natural process yet to be discovered. That’s not rational thinking at all, and it also would be making the effect greater than its cause to say that nothing created something. The beginning had to be of supernatural origin because science teaches us from the First Law of Thermodynamics that natural laws and processes do not have the ability to bring something into existence from nothing.

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    The disorder in the universe can be explained because of chance and random processes, but the order can be explained only because of intelligence and design.

    Gravity may explain how the order found in the precise and orderly courses of thousands of billions of stars is maintained, but gravity cannot explain the origin of that order.

    Some evolutionary astronomers believe that trillions of stars crashed into each other leaving surviving stars to find precise orderly orbits in space. Not only is this irrational, but if there was such a mass collision of stars then there would be a super mass residue of gas clouds in space to support this hypothesis. The present level of residue of gas clouds in space doesn’t support the magnitude of star deaths required for such a hypothesis. And, as already stated, the origin of stars cannot be explained by the Big Bang because of the reasons mentioned above. It’s one thing to say that stars may decay and die into random gas clouds, but it is totally different to say that gas clouds form into stars.

    Even the father of Chaos theory admitted that the “mechanisms” existing in the non-living world allow for only very rudimentary levels of order to arise spontaneously (by chance), but not the kind or level of order we find in the structures of DNA, RNA, and proteins. Yes, individual amino acids have been shown to come into existence by chance but not protein molecules which require that the various amino acids be in a precise sequence just like the letters found in a sentence.

    Some things don’t need experiment or scientific proof. In law there is a dictum called prima facie evidence. It means “evidence that speaks for itself.”

    An example of a true prima facie would be if you discovered an elaborate sand castle on the beach. You don’t have to experiment to know that it came by design and not by the chance forces of wind and water.

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    It’s interesting that Carl Sagan would have acknowledged sequential radio signals in space as evidence of intelligent life sending them, but he wouldn’t acknowledge the sequential structure of molecules in DNA (the genetic code) as evidence of an intelligent Cause. Read my popular Internet article, HOW DID MY DNA MAKE ME.

    I encourage all to read my popular Internet articles:

    NATURAL LIMITS TO EVOLUTION
    HOW FORENSIC SCIENCE REFUTES ATHEISM

    Visit my latest Internet site: THE SCIENCE SUPPORTING CREATION (This site answers many arguments, both old and new, that have been used by evolutionists to support their theory)

    Author of popular Internet article, TRADITIONAL DOCTRINE OF HELL EVOLVED FROM GREEK ROOTS

    *I have given successful lectures (with question and answer period afterwards) defending creation before evolutionist science faculty and students at various colleges and universities. I’ve been privileged to be recognized in the 24th edition of Marquis “Who’s Who in The East” for my writings on religion and science.

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