Astronomers capture images of strange neighbours in nearby galaxy

By Scott Sutherland | Geekquinox 5 hours ago Email Recommend 9

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This 'odd couple' was captured by the ESO's Very Large TelescopeAstronomers at the European Southern Observatory in Chile have captured images of what they're calling an 'odd couple;' a pair of gas clouds they spotted in a neighbouring galaxy, that although they are right next door to each other, have very different colour schemes. The two gas clouds, NGC 2020 on the left and NGC 2014 on the right, are located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, which is a 'satellite galaxy' to our Milky Way, roughly 163,000 light years away. (By the way, NGC is short for 'New General Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars', which contains a list of 7,840 remarkable astronomical objects.) To get a true sense of that distance, here's a video the ESO put together, showing a zoomin from what could be anyone's view on a clear, dark-sky night, to what the Very Large Telescope is able to see with its high-powered vision: