MAP OF MAGELLANIC CLOUD SHEDS LIGHT ON GALAXY FORMATION
I learned the following information from an article at the website of Spaceflight Now.
Astronomers have recently compiled hundreds of thousands of images to create a map of the Magellanic cloud. The Large Magellanic Cloud is a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. It is about 160,000 light years away. Being able to view it as a whole gives astronomers insight into the life cycle of galaxies. Until now we have mainly been able to study galaxy evolution only within our own galaxy.
Karl Gordon of the University of Arizona Steward Observatory states, "What's exciting and significant is that our images go really deep in the galaxy, deep enough to get a life cycle of the interstellar medium, a life cycle of dust. We see young stars which consume dust as they form in dusty molecular clouds and old stars which are ejecting dust back into the interstellar medium. We can now test sophisticated theories about how stars form, how they evolve, what the different populations are, and how important they are in a global galaxy environment." ut we've measured almost the entire galaxy in deep, sharp detail."